Project: Angel
by Inspirationally Red
Summary: ""You should know something, Max." He paused. His maniacal eyes seemed to glow brighter. "You only have so many attempts at saving yourself before your actions influence others. In trying to save the world, I ended up condemning it." Saving four mutants from the School seemed kind; benevolent, almost. But playing God comes with a deadly price, and fate is so easily tempted... AU
1. Come Out And Play, Little Mouse

**Project: Angel **

**Part I**

**by Inspirationally Redd**

**Chapter 1**

**Come Out And Play, Little Mouse**

4444

"Hey, Ratt!"

The voice that called him was loud; loud enough to pierce the barrage of screaming guitars and roaring vocals battering his ears. He resisted the call for as long as he could before goodwill forced him to slow his motorbike, battered black Converse easing down on the brakes as he pulled about in a sharp half-turn. The rubber tyres squealed their protests as they were dragged across the black asphalt and his mouth lifted in a small smile. _Screeching tyres,_ he reflected, _go well with Black Sabbath._

"Ratt!" The hurried footsteps were muffled by rapid drumbeats that abruptly cut off as the headphones were yanked from his ears. Blinking at the sudden lack of sound, Ratt eased off on the throttle. The motorbike's snarls ebbed into an indignant whine as he got off, soles squeaking against the concrete.

"Ratt, you forgot your bag," William Moriah, his friend of about two years, stood beside him, protected from the hazards of the road by the thin footpath. Dangling from one finger were the headphones, from the other the black strap of a battered black satchel, pinned with so many badges it looked alarmingly like it was made out of metal instead of soft fabric.

"Gaah!" The bag was snatched promptly out of his friend's waiting hands. William smiled as he watched his disorganized friend yank open the satchel and rifle through it. In the midst of his rummaging, Ratt paused to rake a black-nailed hand through his choppy dark brown hair, a familiar gesture that made William's smile lift into an open grin.

"Don't worry, everything's in there. You left it on the kitchen bench."

Checking finished, Ratt slung the satchel over his shoulder, placing a hand protectively over its badge-arrayed cover flap in the rare occasion it might take to its head that going elsewhere would be a good idea. "Thank you so much."

William was amused. "I don't know how you could forget something so important, don't you need those papers for your internship?"

"No!" He twitched under his half-glare and then slumped in his black shirt. William's scolding look melted into a grin.

"It's okay, buddy, I understand. You're disorganized."

Ratt's head snapped up. "I'm not disorg- oh, forget it." He swung himself back up onto his glossy black motorbike. "Thanks again for the bag."

"Wait, I forgot to ask, what time will you be finished?"

Ratt shrugged. "I dunno, depends on how long it all takes. Shouldn't be as late as last night," a casual smile worked its way back onto his face as he remembered the concert, but the grin faded the moment William turned away.

"Cool, I'll meet you at Carpe Diem. Good luck,"

Ratt licked his lips and swallowed as he pictured what he was walking into. His voice trembled as he answered, turning his head away so he wouldn't have to look his friend in the eye. Unwittingly his gaze strayed to the small yellow Post-It note crumpled in his right fist: the lone item of interest rescued from the bag.

Scrawled on the note was not a loving goodbye note from a non-existent girlfriend, not a receipt, not a list of directions. It was a reminder.

The School, 6:00am.

Hurry.

"Okay, thanks."

4444

The long street was every horror scenario he could ever imagine combined. A long line of dark asphalt stretched away into a smoky, indistinct horizon where the jagged outlines of buildings scarred the sky like so many broken teeth. The glass windows of the houses looming on both sides glared at him like the eyes of crows perched atop gallows, watching intently for the next juicy morsel to come along. The snarl of the glossy black motorbike beneath him was a small comfort as Ratt slowed to a leisurely pace. The chill early morning breeze stirred the leaves lying in dense brown clumps in the gutters, producing a sound not unlike the rustle of a cloak or the slow, meaningful footsteps of a serial killer and Ratt shivered despite his thick leather jacket.

"Umm, okay..." his words trembled and were swallowed by the dense blanket of silence that seemed to encompass this section of Swanson Street. Ratt turned up the collar of his jacket as he drove along; sadly, it did little to numb the irrational spookiness. Ratt swallowed and decided to focus on what he had come for, scanning the buildings as he passed for some glimpse of a street number.

"54, 55, 56..." his voice was coming stronger now that he had something else to focus on, green-gold eyes narrowed as they swept past the houses. "57... 58!"

The School squatted between an office block and one of the many ambiguous grey stone buildings that everybody saw in Melbourne, but nobody really knew what they were used for other than looking majestic and old-world. Seeing the School, Ratt was forcibly reminded of a large green toad crouched in a river bed, distended belly bulging as it sunned itself. The building itself looked grotesque enough; a towering modern brick structure with a sleek set of glass doors leading into what looked distinctly like a lobby of some sort. The numerous windows were all tinted black glass; Ratt grimaced in annoyance as the feeling he was being watched, which he had been trying to dispel for the last several minutes, returned with a vengeance.

There was a parking space for bikes at the front of the building running parallel to the nature strip. The three battered bicycles already parked there boasted a smattering of browned autumn leaves dropped from the plane tree above. Ratt guided his motorbike into a vacant spot. He wasn't entirely certain what the policy was towards motorbikes, but he had never been one for rules, so he left it. Ratt turned off the ignition, fiddling with the ignition keys as he steeled himself to go in.

He had discovered the School through one of the many links in William's intensive chain of acquaintances. Ratt had successfully managed to please his mother by news of a newly found internship. His mother, long since driven to exasperation by her punk son's overly relaxed air when it came to finding a job, could not have been more excited when Ratt had broken the news. She had been so pleased, in fact, she hadn't reacted to Ratt's potential scientist stint, even though he had made it clear his skills lay more in the area of computers, rock music, and being generally lazy. But still, a job was a job, and working at the School paid well, even though Ratt was still unsure of the exact purpose that the School served. The website he had found due to William's friend was extremely vague, hinting at only a 'career in science' and the location. Their contact details had been slightly poor too, consisting only of an out-of-date phone number and an email address that bounced back any attempted contact. In fact, the only thing that had remained consistent on the whole website was the School's location.

Ratt took a breath and shoved his keys into the pocket of his skinny jeans, the movement hampered somewhat by the tight material. A pale hand rose to toy worriedly with the shoulder strap of his bag as he walked towards the front doors, passing an elaborate bonsai-and-fountain feature on his way.

_Classy,_ Ratt smirked, before his hand was on the handle and he was pushing the doors open.

His first impression was that he had walked into a very close imitation of a courtroom; it had the very same foreboding feeling trapped within its dark wood panelled walls. At the far end of the room stretched a long white reception desk which seemed almost spartan in the complete lack of clutter it contained. To the right of the room hunched an array of dilapidated red couches, huddling around a low black coffee table like old mariners sheltering around a fire after a storm. Somebody had placed potted aspidistras around the room at random intervals in a vain attempt to make the place look cheery. The effect failed dismally, possibly due to the peeling white paint on the ceiling, the off-cream carpeting and the overall tired air that hung over the whole room like a shroud. Behind the reception desk hunched a wizened old woman with wire-rimmed glasses, which didn't improve the ambience at all.

_This doesn't look like a lab,_ Ratt thought, just as the receptionist's head slowly creaked upwards, gaze riveting to him like small black bullets. A red lipsticked mouth pursed into a tremulous oval shape before a harsh screech ripped itself across the room.

"Can I help you?" It was disturbing how crow-like she sounded.

Ratt stayed rooted to the spot. His mouth had suddenly gone dry; he wouldn't be at all surprised if his knees gave way. "H-Hi, my name is Ratt, I'm..."

"The new intern, yes?" The woman's eyes stared dully at him, roving his whole frame with an intensity that only made Ratt feel slightly uncomfortable. He knew what she was seeing: a tall man in his early twenties, with jaggedly cut dark brown hair that looked as though it had been hacked short with a butcher knife, tired green-gold eyes ringed with an excessive amount of black eyeliner, battered black Converse, ripped skinny jeans, safety-pinned white shirt beneath a heavy black leather jacket, arms braced with a number of studded black leather cuffs, and light blue headphones slung around his neck, still issuing faint, tinny bars of Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid'. It was a look Ratt had honed over the years, and he still felt slightly proud of it.

The woman evidently seemed unperturbed by his appearance. A claw-like hand inched towards a piece of paper. Ratt stared, transfixed as the hand crackled around the paper, adding it to a hefty dark blue-bound file beside her on the desk, while her other hand beckoned him forward with a bright red fingernail. Ratt obeyed; he felt like a marionette.

The red-taloned hand rose swiftly to clear her wrinkled forehead of several ropy locks of grey hair before her gaze fixed on his, eyes as beady and dark as a raven that stalked a graveyard. 'My name's Marianne. I'm the receptionist." She added unnecessarily. She grabbed the file and shoved it at him. Ratt, barely prepared, gasped as it was thrust into his arms, and nearly dropped it.

"This is just some information about your hours—" she handed him a loose page that had inadvertently fluttered from the file, then ducked under the desk for more. "—the dress code, safety guidelines, codes of conduct, the standard..." Papers flew at him almost as quickly as he could catch them. "And this," she held out the last page, "is a letter of introduction. If you get stopped by a security guard before we get your clearance badge printed, just show them this. Also…" papers flew as the old woman delved through the clutter swamping her desk before several crumpled forms were thrust at him. "The Director will give you a brief explanation of your duties here. His office is at the end of the hall on the top floor. The lifts-" she gestured behind her at a pair of gleaming silver doors behind her. "- are there."

Ratt nodded, trying to remain expressionless despite his confusion. The Director? Was this a lab or not? "Okay, thanks, Marianne."

He opened his bag and carefully tucked the file inside it. Marianne, he thought as he hurried towards the gleaming steel door of the lift, was definitely creepy. A quick glance behind him at her computer monitor proved she had been playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent before he had arrived. That was all he needed to vow to never approach the woman again if he could help it.

The heavy lift door slowly hissed closed behind him, the gleaming metal obstructing his view of the lobby. His only way out. The feeling of being inside a horror film increased, and Ratt gritted his teeth. _This,_ he thought as he turned to the buttons, _is going to be a really weird day._

He blinked. The lift buttons were tiny and arranged in a solid block that seemed to encompass half of the wall. The building obviously was bigger than he had originally thought, and that fact seemed only to strengthen as his eyes scanned past the tiny labels bearing names like BASEMENT LEVEL 01… BASEMENT LEVEL 02… BASEMENT LEVEL 16...

_How many floors does this thing have?_ Ratt thought shakily as he reached out to touch the button for the top floor. The lift clanked noisily as it ascended, Ratt's feeling of foreboding only worsening as the fluorescent light on the ceiling above flickered crazily.

"I am gonna die." He whispered to the reflection of himself in the mirror.

The lift dinged far too quickly for his liking, and the doors slid open with a rattle. Alarmed, Ratt spun around, and nearly lost his footing when he saw who had entered.

A tall woman with a river of straight black hair cascading down her back entered the lift, eyes narrowed in thought as she stared down at a clipboard she held in her hands, tongue protruding slightly from in between her lips as she read. She was dressed in a crisp white lab coat, a neat array of coloured pens poking out from the breast pocket.

Sensing his presence, the woman raised her head. Her blue eyes widened as she saw him, before her mouth relaxed into a smile. "Hello. I haven't seen you around." She had a thick Russian accent.

Ratt blinked, fighting to control the irrational blush that suddenly rose to his cheeks. "I-ah-I'm Ratt,"

The woman glanced at his clothes and, with the smallest of amused smiles playing around her lips, held out her hand. "Nice to meet you, I am Evgenia. Will you be working here?"

Ratt shook her hand. "I'm the new intern."

Evgenia looked thoughtful. "Yes, I heard there would be a new intern working with us."

"What do you do exactly?" Ratt seized his chance at getting some information.

To his surprise and annoyance, Evgenia laughed. "That's classified. You will have to talk to the Director first," she nodded at the brightly lit button on the panel display. "You're going to see him, yes?"

Ratt nodded slowly. "Yeah..." The sick feeling in his gut worsened.

Evgenia laughed again, perhaps sensing his nervousness. "Don't worry; I am sure you'll be fine." The lift dinged. "This is my floor." She smiled at him as she turned to walk out of the lift. "It was nice meeting you, Ratt."

Ratt nodded. "Right, nice meeting you too." The lift doors closed with another rattling wheeze, leaving Ratt once again alone.

Ratt took a breath and tried to calm himself, pensively eyeing the lift buttons as the lift trundled merrily upwards. He couldn't go back downstairs, that much was clear. He would blow the entire internship, not to mention the hail of accusations he would meet when he got home. He had to talk to the Director, and that was that, no matter how weird the facility was turning out to be.

"I can do this," he insisted, talking more to his knees than anything else as the lift dinged and the doors slid open. He took a single step, putting one black Converse over the threshold of the elevator. "I can do this." Another step. The brunette youth set off through the windowless hallway with as much enthusiasm as he could possibly summon through a clenched gut and dry throat. His bag slammed against his hip, the sound leaping ahead of him down the corridor.

Shadows draped themselves languidly against everything possible in the hallway. Towering portraits of what Ratt assumed to be former head scientists glowered darkly from the walls, eyes seeming to follow him with a palpable air of disapproval. 'Paranoid' had ended and 'Fake It' was beginning, the tinny bars smothered as Ratt silently turned the iPod off, the silence opening its vast maw and swallowing him.

"Sure," Ratt muttered, voice seeming as small and as insignificant as an insect as he walked past another of the gloomy, surreal portraits. "I can fake it, cool…"

He stopped in surprise, then doubled back to stare at the painting he had just passed. The faces adorning the corridor's walls had so far mostly been men: scowling men dressed in white lab coats, eerie in their almost uniform similarity. This painting was different. The painting's subject was a figure – Ratt couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl – swathed in the folds of a white gown, reaching up towards an indigo-hued sky with a beatific smile that Ratt normally associated with either religious paintings or an overdose on drugs. Sprouting from the figure's back was a pair of pristine white wings. The ground below the figure was dry and crossed with rivulets of red and, now that Ratt looked closer, he realized the forests that covered the hills to the background of the picture were actually arrays of tall hypodermic needles.

Ratt took a step back and shuddered. Creepier and creepier.

The last door in the corridor was jet-black, with a silver doorknob protruding at eye-level from the dark metal. A metal plaque bearing the title THE DIRECTOR was set into centre of the door. Above the lintel was another painting, this time a long rectangular portrait of what looked like a Greek goddess with long, flowing hair and an owl perched on her left shoulder, staring benignly downwards. Seeing this, Ratt stopped for the second time.

"Oh… that's Athena, right?" he wracked his brain for the various scraps of Greek mythology he had learnt in high school. "The goddess of wisdom…"

Feeling slightly better at this analysis, Ratt raised his fist to knock at the door, but his hand stilled several centimetres above the plaque, unable to close the gap. Something considerably larger than butterflies – more like jellyfish - spun backflips in his stomach, and Ratt closed his eyes.

"I can't do this…"

_Knock!_ The shrill voice at the back of his head sounded uncannily like his mother. _Knock, Ratt, you know how much this means to us… _

"Enter!" a booming voice rang out from behind the metal door and it was only dignity that prevented Ratt from streaking back up the corridor the way he had come. Composing himself with a quick, silent gulp, he pushed open the door.

"G-good morning, my name is…"

The man waved his comment aside with an irritated gesture. "Yes, yes, I know who you are. Sit."

Ratt swallowed a nervous, irrational giggle and scooted towards the seat he had been offered; a cold wooden chair pushed against the desk. The low chair made him feel minuscule compared to the man that faced him, tall and imposing behind a vast cherry wood desk. A short, pointed black goatee lent him a sharp, grunge look, and eyes bore through him beneath bushy eyebrows nearly as dark as his pristine black coat.

"I presume," there was a condescending, belittling air to his tone that made Ratt's teeth clench and his nails bite into the cold wooden arms of the chair. "That you have already received your basic information?"

"Yeah, but there are still a few forms I have to get signed," Ratt answered, unclenching his jaw. Grateful for a chance to escape that disdainful glare, Ratt dropped his gaze to his bag, flipping open the badge-strewn cover to grope inside the tangle of belongings inside. Ratt could almost hear the disapproval in the Director's impatient sigh as he sifted through the items - a PSP, two tins of peppermints, four notebooks, countless graphite pencils, pens of various colours, iPhone, iPod, three pairs of tangled headphones, laptop, wallet, keys, myki, and a slightly squashed packet of Oreos.

"Here!" Ratt proclaimed eventually, waving the crumpled papers aloft. The Director's sigh ruffled his goatee as his hand darted out to grab them, pulling them close across the cherry wood of the desk. Ratt craned his neck, trying hard not to stare as the Director smoothed the rumpled edges and sharp creases. The Director's hands were small, like a child's, and deathly pale. They reminded Ratt of white spiders as they plucked a pen from the open drawer beside him and darted lithely across the page, filling the space above the dotted line with an untidy black scrawl before they were finished and thrust back at the black-haired boy.

"Everything's in order," The Director grunted, dropping the pen back in the drawer with a clunk.

"Thanks," Ratt answered cautiously, slowly slipping the papers into his bag, leaving the flap gaping open.

"Now, as I was saying…" those eyes above the dark goatee flared dangerously at him, as though his interruption had been a terrible offence. Ratt's teeth were by now clenching down so hard his jaw hurt. "You have received your basic information. You will memorize it all." His tone brooked no argument. Ratt sat silently in front of him, feeling rather like he was a wayward student being grilled by an overzealous principal.

"I will explain how this facility operates, and what is expected of you now that you're here. Listen carefully. I will only say this once,"

Ratt nodded, expecting the Director's explanation to be quick. It turned out to be anything but. Try as he might, he found his attention wandering no matter how intensely he tried to focus on the Director's hawk-like eyes. The annoyance he had originally felt at the Director's less-than-welcoming presence dimmed somewhat, leaving him feeling bored and… well, annoyed still. As the man droned on about what seemed like three hours' worth of safety regulations, Ratt allowed his gaze to wander, green-gold eyes darting interestedly around the interior of the office beneath half-closed eyelids.

The office proved a far more interesting subject than the lecture. Rows of sleek metal filing cabinets and multitudes of wooden bookshelves stood like sentinels along the walls, leaving only a small amount of room for a desk. The wooden desk top was strewn with scattered manila folders, their pristine white contents fluttering weakly in the gusts from an air conditioner that crouched on the ceiling. A slatted window at the far end of the room bled sinuous fingers of light through the vertical slats, dripping black and purple shadows onto the dark grey walls. Faded beige carpet covered the entire floor, shaggy fabric looking pristine and just-vacuumed.

"… all of the duties I described are written in detail in this," Ratt's eyes snapped back. The Director pushed a hefty spiral bound yellow notebook across the desk towards him. "I'll expect you to read and memorize it."

Ratt nodded mechanically although his insides were quailing as he took the offered notebook. He already had the basic information to read, and now he was expected to memorize another? His mouth moved before confirming with his brain. "I will,"

"Heh." The Director settled back into his chair and steepled his small, white hands in front of him. Something glinted in the back of his dark eyes, something that told Ratt the Director didn't expect him to last a minute under the schedule of the School. "I will be assigning Doctor Nadezhda to you. She will assist you while you are here. She will give you your assignments and make sure you are performing to our expectations." There was a steely note to the Director's voice that made Ratt's fingers clench. "All research, notes, contributions or experiments should be confirmed by either Doctor Nadezhda or myself. If we discover you have violated these rules, you will be dismissed immediately without references. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," replied Ratt instinctively.

Ratt couldn't be certain, but he thought he saw the Director's eyes narrow at the statement, and mentally kicked himself. "Nurse Bell will give you a tour of the facilities before seeing you out. She should be downstairs in the lobby,"

"R-right…" Ratt got up, swaying unsteadily as his bag once again banged petulantly against his hip. A thought struck him and he ventured. "Um… thanks."

The Director's eyes narrowed to slits. "Do not disappoint us."

4444

By the time they had circulated through the building and all of its four floors, three sublevels, nine separate laboratories, the helipad on the rooftop and the massive car park, Ratt's feet were aching and his bag had drummed a tattoo of elaborate bruises into his side with almost sadistic enthusiasm.

"And we're back at the lobby," Nurse Bell sounded cheerful, as though she habitually faced far worse trials than the one Ratt had just endured. "Sorry we couldn't show you the basements levels; they're normally off-limits even for staff, normally only the really high-ranking members of the faculty are allowed in."

"That's fine," Ratt gasped, breathing hard. His head felt like it was being slowly filled with boiling water; he wagered it was only a matter of time before he started seeing stars. He reached for his bag – didn't he have a bottle of water stashed somewhere? "I…"

"Ratt!" Both Nurse Bell and said person jumped as Marianne's honk flew across the lobby. Hunched behind her desk like a wizened, crotchety spider, Marianne gestured with a red-clawed hand for Ratt to come to her. Her next call confirmed it. "Will you come here, please?"

Nurse Bell wandered off with a cheerful 'See you!' and Ratt made his way to the receptionist desk with a sinking heart, wondering what on earth could she possibly want with him now.

"The Director sent down another packet for you," As always, Marianne's manner was as abrupt as the sharp shove with which she sent the said packet hurtling towards him. It was funny, Ratt reflected as he caught it, how in just a few minutes he felt like he had known the receptionist all his life.

"Just some more general information on what you'll be expected to do here," Marianne was saying, although her voice was rapidly trailing into a dull whine filling Ratt's ears.

Ratt smiled and nodded robotically, still wishing he had some water. "Right, thanks." As the brown-haired youth slipped the new folder into his bag and hurried out of the building, Marianne turned back to The Dark Descent again.

Ratt walked slowly along the footpath until he reached his motorbike, leaning seductively where he had left it beside the bicycle rack. Sliding one leg over the glinting black and silver metal, Ratt yanked his keys from his pocket and inserted them into the ignition, ignoring the explosive roar that erupted from the bike as he twisted the grip.

_This,_ he thought as he drove back along Swanson Street, _has been a really weird morning._

4444

The strong, bitter aroma of ground coffee beans accompanied the lusty jangle of the shop bell as Ratt entered. He breathed in the scent, stomach growling as he pushed open the glass-paned door. The gentle murmur of people's conversations provided a low backing track to the harsh clunks and grinding of various coffee machines as they worked away to provide the patrons with their steaming hot beverages.

Ratt had been coming to Carpe Diem for as long as he could remember. Friendly, the small, cosy coffee shop on Grattan Street boasted both a cup of coffee and a meal for fifteen dollars every Thursday. Ratt had since found solace in Carpe Diem whenever he had found himself running low on money. As such, he had become a familiar sight within the yellow painted walls, clock-patterned murals and low black tables of the café, so much so he had even befriended several of the staff.

"Hi, Ratt!" As quick as if his errant thought had summoned her, Monica was at his side, beaming her owner's grin, having apparently come straight up from the depths of her beloved kitchen to meet him. "What will it be today?"

Ratt didn't even have to consider this. He had gotten up ridiculously early to go on the tour, and Nurse Bell hadn't even slowed down enough to let him think about lunch. He grinned at her. "Cafetiére with low-fat soy milk, three spoonful's of Lindt chocolate sauce and one of Cadbury, crushed not ground beans and one scoop of strawberry-and-chocolate-chip ice cream? Oh, and make it cold not hot, please." The practice of inventing wild food designs had become somewhat of a tradition throughout the years Ratt had spent going to Carpe Diem. Each time, Ratt would invent broader and more inventive meals and, each time, Monica would create them. It was a testament to her skills as a barista and chef that she was not only able to create Ratt's wild imaginings but still make them delicious.

"Will that be shaken not stirred, Bond?" the stocky black-haired girl's sarcasm was pronounced with a grin she scribbled down his order on a pad that had miraculously appeared in-between her fingers. "Anything to eat?"

Ratt took a minute to think. "Chicken schnitzel wrap with tomato and lettuce, and no mayonnaise."

Monica raised an eyebrow. "Not very imaginative, James." She finished writing down the rest of her order and bowed dramatically. "Take a seat, Ratt, your meal will be out shortly."

"Thank you, Jeeves," Ratt grinned.

Monica rolled her eyes. "I'm not a butler…" something caught her eye behind the massive chrome counter-top and she whipped around, moving hurriedly through the door back into the kitchen. "Take a seat!" her voice trailed behind her like a long ribbon. "Your friends are at the back table."

Ratt started, snapping his head around so fast it cracked. Through his wince, Ratt caught sight of the table Monica had specified. With a convenient view out the window onto the street below and stationed beneath the air conditioner, Ratt and his friends had staked a claim on the table for so long the other regulars knew not to go near it. _Dressing like we do has its advantages,_ Ratt mused as he meandered towards them, feeling slightly amused they hadn't noticed him yet.

First, there was Lenore, sitting at the head of the table. The blue-eyed young woman was perched regally on top of a chair, straight black pencil skirt neatly folded around her knees, blue fishnets neon-bright against the black fabric of her stockings. Ever a goth, Lenore Giammai worked at Hazardous, a grungy clothes shop near Brunswick Street, accommodating fashion of various goth, emo, punk and metalhead varieties. Although she was only twenty-three, there was something indefinably mature in her icy blue eyes that had always intimidated Ratt from the moment William had introduced her.

Next was Tanner, resplendent as always in a black coat that looked like something out of the Matrix, complete with heavy green eyeshadow and a black trilby hat adorned with a single blue peacock feather. Ratt was surprised she was sitting next to William -considering they had known each other for years, Tanner acted a lot like the blonde man was her arch-enemy. Unperturbed by her acidic glower, William had his arm slung around her shoulders and was chattering avidly to her, perhaps under the impression that her expression was one of interest and not boredom.

Panning his gaze around the rest of the table, Ratt caught sight of Mihael's trademark grey motorbike leathers, and Red's eponymous red hair. He didn't know Mihael or Red as well as he would have liked – Ratt had only just heard garbled information about them being in a gang for a short amount of time. Mihael was a bit of a loner, often wearing a distant, sad expression on his face, so often that they had taken to calling him 'Misery'. He had several swooping black tattoos curving up his neck, and shared Ratt's love of motorcycles, having dubbed his own 'Ruby', apparently after his younger sister, whom Ratt had never met.

Red, as far as Ratt could tell, was Northern Irish by birth, and had such a thick accent it was sometimes a struggle to understand what he was saying. Highly superstitious and full of various odd notions involving spirits, Celtic religion and the dead, Red had been the sole cause of a rather hilarious incident that had occurred the first time he had set foot in Carpe Diem. With her hawk-like eyes, Monica had instantly been able to spot the dead, slightly mouldering rabbit's foot hanging around Red's neck, and had ordered him to take it off or be banned from entering Carpe Diem ever again due to health regulations. Red had compromised by swapping it for a large bronze horseshoe charm, and since then had been able to enjoy his usual strong black coffee without endangering any of the other customer's health.

"Hey guys," Ratt announced, reaching the table.

William spun around, removing his arm from Tanner's shoulder. Tanner looked relieved. "Hey Ratt!"

A chorus of greetings met him as he pulled up a chair next to Mihael, the blonde shifting away slightly to make room for him. Ratt slid his bag under his chair, trying hard not to notice the thunks as each of the hefty folders inside hit the floorboards through the fabric. Judging by the colourful collection of plates scattered around the table, Ratt guessed his friends had already eaten, and once again was aware of his own hunger.

"So how was it?" William demanded.

Ratt stretched, grimacing at the sound of his joints crackling uncomfortably. "It was really weird,"

It took him several minutes to explain what had occurred inside his tour of the School, but it was worth it. Tanner and William's expressions went through various different stages of curiosity, shock and unease while Misery, Lenore and Red… well, they had never been what you might call outspoken. Red merely blinked perplexedly at his coffee while Lenore raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and Misery only looked vaguely interested.

This made Ratt feel rather chagrined. "Come on guys, the least you can do is look surprised!"

"I am," Red had apparently been endeavouring to tone down his accent, although personally Ratt couldn't tell the difference. He had a sneaking suspicion Red purposely thickened his accent just to inwardly laugh at people who failed to understand him. If there was one thing Ratt had learnt about the superstitious Northern Irishman, it was that he had a twisted, if sometimes subtle, sense of humour. "Very surprised. The receptionist was playing The Dark Descent, you say?"

"Yeah, that'll be the first thing you'd notice, wouldn't it?" William playfully elbowed his friend in the ribs. "You love that stuff."

"Daniel," Lenore grumbled into the remains of what had possibly been some sort of a chicken-and-rice dish, "is awesome. Enough said,"

"Anyway, tell us what the Director was like, Ratt!" Tanner begged.

"He was the weirdest of the bunch," Ratt proclaimed, spreading his arms wide. "He had really weird hands. They were really small and pale. He held them like this," he demonstrated by holding his own hands out limply in front of him, as though about to listlessly poke at piano keys.

"The height of weirdness," Lenore snorted. "Plenty of people have small hands, Ratt."

"Yes, but not like his. His were…"

"Uh oh," William proclaimed suddenly, brown eyes immediately fixed on something behind Ratt's shoulder. "Here she comes."

Misery instantly buried his face in the high collar of his grey shirt, the pale strips of cheek that were still visible suddenly flushing a bright pink. "Oh no."

Monica's sudden appearance almost sent Ratt leaping out of his chair in shock. She was bearing his order, and Ratt's sudden hunger drove away anything that had previously been foremost on his mind, weird or not. "Here you go Ratt, that'll be fifteen dollars."

"This is why I love Carpe Diem," Tanner said appreciatively to Lenore, while Ratt dived under the table to retrieve the necessary cash from his bag. "The food's always really good, and it's cheap too…"

Ratt uttered an annoyed hiss under his breath and heaved his bag up into the light of the tabletop so he could rummage through it more easily. "Here, hold this." He yanked one of the folders out of the bag and shoved it into Lenore's hands. The packet of additional information ended up spinning onto the desk, coming in danger of knocking over Ratt's exotic coffee.

Ratt's fingers finally closed over the surface of his brown leather wallet, and he let out a cheer. "Finally!" Rifling through it, he handed over the exact amount to Monica.

Monica grinned. "Much obliged." Wandering away, she wound around the various scattering tables, sheet of black hair rippling down her back as she moved.

William whistled and leant over to playfully ruffle the hair of a still-cringing Misery. "You have awesome taste, man."

"You should tell her how you feel!" Lenore, ever the closet romantic, was the first of the two girls to offer her opinion.

"What she said." But Tanner's voice was far too cold and clipped to indicate that she really agreed and, seeing the way she looked at Misery herself made Ratt wonder just what exactly was going on between his two friends.

He looked over at Red. "Red, what do you…?"

Red tipped his head towards both Tanner and Misery and gave Ratt a broad wink.

Meanwhile, William had reached over and grabbed the packet of additional information from where it had ended up in the middle of the table. "What's this?" The rip of the plastic cover opening drew Ratt's eye faster than food ever could.

Ratt lunged across the table, nearly upsetting his drink again. "Hey, that's mine! That's the information about the School – it's supposed to be confidential!"

"How confidential can it be if you dump it on the nearest table you find?" William chuckled, leaning back out of reach of Ratt's flailing arms.

"Will, come on!" Ratt whined, trying in vain to snatch the folder off him. This time his drink _did_ fall, and it was only the timely action of Misery snatching it up that prevented the table from getting a coat of chocolate. "Give it back!"

William grinned and held it at arm's length, pointedly ignoring Lenore and Red's complaints as Ratt's hands flapped all over the table. "Come and get it yourself then," Ratt flopped back into his chair with an angry huff. William would no doubt turn it into some sort of impromptu wrestling match and, although he had a lot of skills in certain areas, physical strength was not one of them. Ratt could barely stand one hour at the gym as opposed to the day William tended to spend. He considered ordering Misery to get it back, but decided against it. The only person he had ever seen best Will in a fight was the former gang member, but Misery looked as though he had enough on his mind already, still staring over at Monica as she waited tables.

Ratt raked a hand through his brown hair with a doom-laden moan, reaching for a fork so he could stab his chicken wrap with it. "My mum is gonna kill me if I can't get this job," he pleaded, and the mention of his mother seemed to stop everybody on the table mid-action. William's grin faded, and Misery sank several inches back down into his seat again.

"Yeah… no offense, but your mum's a bitch," Tanner grimaced, unrepentant despite the sharp looks that were flashed at her from nearly every person at the table.

Ratt tipped the chair back, balancing on the two back legs as he looked up at the ceiling. "Tell me about it," he groaned. His hand briefly dug into his front right pocket, resurfacing moments later clutching a tube of eyeliner. "Have I told you about her reaction when I first started dressing like this?"

Red looked askance at the eyeliner. Superstitious and slightly odd he might be, he had never entirely gotten used to the practice of putting on makeup, that seemed to be a necessity to every male in his small friendship circle that weren't either him or William, even though his life-long friend Misery would likely be classified as an emo just by the amount of makeup he wore. "Dude, I swear you guys wear more makeup than girls sometimes,"

"We've been through this," Ratt reminded him absently, brushing the wand gently over his left eyelid. Upon meeting William and his friends several years ago, Red had originally been slightly uneasy of what he thought was nothing more than blatant attempts at transvestism. He had relaxed once they had all denied this, and since then had come to accept their slightly odd fashion choices as being simply 'punk things'.

Red raised his hands defensively. "Sorry man, it's just, you know how I feel about…"

Ratt waved his comment aside with his left hand, still miraculously managing to apply the finishing touches to his eyeliner with his right. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, did I tell you about her reaction?"

Lenore, Misery, Tanner and Red each said "No," William groaned "A thousand times,"

"She thought my girlfriend had broken up with me," Ratt snorted, choosing to ignore William's comment as he pocketed the eyeliner tube again. "I was twenty and jobless, for God's sake. Just goes to show how little she pays attention…"

Tanner made an offensive gesture with her right hand into mid-air, apparently aimed at his mother. "Like I said, bitch."

"Tanner…" Misery murmured reproachfully.

Ratt tipped the chair forward again and sighed, taking a pondering bite out of his wrap. "I know she just want what's best for me…" at this Tanner snorted, but he chose to ignore it, swallowing a mouthful of chicken as compensation. "But… I dunno, she just doesn't believe I can ever amount to anything."

"Bull," William's growl drew surprised looks from everyone on the table. "You're a complete wizard on the computer, and you're an awesome singer. What more do they want?"

"Ah yes, but 'Computer Engineering is a job for sociopaths and those suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, people who have limited social interactions and likely will never fully blossom into their full potential as psychologically healthy human beings," Tanner mimicked his mother. The impression was quite uncanny – she even managed the clipped, business-like tone.

Red snickered, nearly choking on a mouthful of coffee. "I gotta say, I'm with your mum on that one. You're not exactly mentally healthy, huh?"

Ratt waved aside the comment with a grin and a laugh. "None of us are."

Tanner sat rod-straight in her chair, switching to another imitation of his mother. "How can you do this, you bring dishonour upon our family if you refuse to get a job, I have sacrificed so much to get you this far, the least you can do is get a degree or at least a job that's useful, I deserve a little recognition…" Tanner shredded her napkin in stiff, jerky motions, eyes blazing with anger. "I mean, what the hell does she want? You to get a job, or recognition for herself?"

"Let it go, Tanner," William cautioned gently.

"You're not actually doing this just to make your mum happy are you?" Lenore asked distantly, peering over William's shoulder at the information folder. "Genetics doesn't really seem like your thing,"

Ratt shrugged, trying his hardest to remain cool and undefensive. "How different from computers can it be?"

"You're a really good singer," Misery said it so quietly for a second Ratt wondered if he had imagined it.

Tanner instantly went into another imitation. "Of course you cannot study for a degree in Music, music is for drug-addicts and other dangerous folk that will inevitably lead you to an early end and an overall unfulfilled life... and what is all this about saying you sound like Davey Havok? Whoever he is, his name only proves a musical career is all about eccentricities and is definitely too dangerous for one such as yourself…"

"You know, she's right," Red said speculatively, leaning back in his chair to shoot a studying glance towards Ratt. "You do sound a lot like Davey Havok."

"He's the lead singer of AFI, right?" William asked, partly drowned out by Tanner and Red's appreciative cheers.

"Anyway," Lenore frowned at them for the interruption. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

All of his friend's grilling was making Ratt feel slightly uncomfortable. "Yeah, of course, I…"

"Hey, what's this?" Tanner had joined William and Lenore in reading the information packet. Ratt was confused for several moments before automatic fear caught in his throat and settled in his stomach. He couldn't tell them not to share the confidential information with anybody else, because they would all want to know… Ratt swallowed, mind ticking at what felt like a hundred miles per hour, food abandoned on his plate. It wouldn't matter even if they _did_ read the information, would it? None of his friends had occupations that even led them remotely near the School or its respective field, what with Lenore and her job at Hazardous, William with his job as a graphic designer, Tanner at an ice-cream parlour in the city, Red as a barista and Misery… well, Ratt didn't exactly know what Misery did, but surely he wouldn't come across the School, would he? Ratt cringed. God, if the Director somehow got word of any of this…

"Holy…" Tanner's eyes widened behind the brim of her hat as she scrutinized a page. "This looks… umm… weird."

"Yeah, well, everything in the School is weird, remember?" answered Red, coming around to stand behind Tanner to read the page. Several lines down, his eyes widened. "Oh."

Misery craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the pages as they slid past his nose. His eyes may have widened the tiniest bit, but all he said was "Huh."

"What?" the fear in his stomach morphed into dread, and Ratt reached over to pluck the papers from his friend's hands, scanning the first few lines.

_Your assignments at the School will primarily be work with a number of genetic experiments, including but not limited to, working with combining and manipulating DNA of designated test subjects including but not limited to birds, mammals, amphibians and various other animals._

Ratt blinked at the page before meeting his friend's gaze, startled. "I thought I was just going to…" his voice petered out before he could finish because, after all, he didn't exactly know what he'd been going to do.

"You still sure this is what you want, Doctor Frankenstein?" Tanner's voice held the beginnings of 'I-told-you-so' as she stretched back in her chair, stretching her stiff muscles.

"Yes," when Misery spoke, his quiet voice was almost like a warning. "After all, you really have no idea what might go on in there…"

4444

To Be Continued... 

* * *

Notes:

As you would have seen in the summary, this story is AU (alternate universe), or pseudo-AU, as I like to call it. This means that, while a number of things in this fic have been changed due to the markedly different plot, the overall idea and themes are still essentially the same as Maximum Ride. Max's flock is even going to make an appearance! They'll stick around for quite a bit too. You'll have a while to wait though, as they don't appear until much, much later into the fic.

Leading on from the above, also, I'd like to point out that the main setting of this part of the fic is in Australia (my home, heehee), hence dealing with different things. I'm not going to go into the differences between American and Australian English, as I'm sure you all get enough of that already, what I really meant are things like the School, Itex, mutants etcetera. So, the School mentioned in this chapter isn't the same as the one of Max's flock – it'd probably be something like the Australian branch of the School. Although I'm sure all you readers are savvy enough to have picked that up right away ;P

(side note on symbolism: … there's not really much in this chapter, except for Ratt's music choices while in the School, and the paintings in the Director's corridor XD Read carefully, is all I can say)

This is my first major Maximum Ride fic (generally meaning multi-chapter as opposed to oneshots, haha) after Membrane Of Lies and in a different style, although one that I'm definitely more comfortable with (sorry Membrane fans, I tend to experiment with different writing styles a lot :) ). **Reviews are much appreciated, and so is constructive criticism.** I have a heck of a lot to improve, I know.

(side note, the length of this chapter! :O Took two whole days to write, ended up 20 pages, 7,915 words long in a Microsoft Word Document! *head explodes* This is a heck of a lot coming from a writer whose chapters are normally below ten pages XD I'm so proud of myself :D)


	2. The Scalpels Are Drawn

**Project: Angel**

**Part I **

**by Inspirationally Red**

**Chapter Two **

**The Scalpels Are Drawn**

"_I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me."_

4444

Ratt had managed to snatch a one-hour period in his room listening to music on his iPod before his mother's voice floated up the stairs and ended it. When he came downstairs his mother was standing by the door, greeting a couple who had just come in through the door with her selling smile; confident, welcoming, _alright_.

That was a lie. It had been a long time, Ratt knew, since his mother had been anything close to alright. He could see it; see the tense line of her shoulders, the ramrod straight back, the severe hair parting.

It seemed like only yesterday. "It had struck quickly," the doctors had said; a sudden heart attack that had inevitably claimed his father's life, leaving him lying still in his bed when Ratt and his mother had found him the next morning. A part of him wished that, after two years, his mother would get over it. But the loss of a family member was never an easy thing to get over, even with the help of all the well-wishers, the condolences, the flowers and the sympathetic "I'm so sorry," friends.

Ratt had gotten over it. He had gotten over it remarkably quickly, somewhere in between his sudden change in fashion taste and meeting William and his friends in the shadows of a late Eluveitie concert. And yet, in the year that followed after his dad had died, the world hadn't seemed worth living. Ratt's whole life seemed cold and numb, and forcing any form of excitement of purpose out of it had seemed as painful as multiple teeth extractions. In a way, Ratt supposed William, Tanner, Red and Misery had saved him that night.

It had been dark at the concert, or maybe his depression had just exaggerated the atmosphere. All around him had thronged the restless, milling bodies of what, when he had looked, seemed nothing more to him than another group of the millions of mourners he had seen, smiled at, and lied to that he was "Alright." Selfish people. Uncaring people that smiled with false lips daubed unnatural lipstick shades, faces vacant. Faces that, when he looked, saw only sympathy, and never any desire to _do_ something. For sympathy couldn't resurrect the dead. Sympathy wouldn't bring his dad back.

He had considered joining him. He had even gone so far as to plan how he would do it, and which would hurt less; knife or pill. And, even as the crowd thrashed around him, grating out the verses of Siraxta in bad Gaulish, his hand had dropped with difficulty to the bottle of pills in his pocket. Medication the doctors had prescribed to help him sleep, but an overdose…

_This isn't such a bad way to die,_ Ratt had thought, raising the little bottle to his lips as he turned away, seeking the exit sign that pulsed like a steady green beacon through the haze. He couldn't think of many ways to die that would be better than exiting a mosh pit listening to a band he loved. His lips trembled, chapped skin flickering against the rim of the bottle…

"Hey, could I have some of that?"

Startled, Ratt had spun around. And they were there behind him, crushed awkwardly together in the heat of the mosh pit; Tanner, dressed in a long-sleeved gypsy-like shirt, leggings and short skirt in all shades of brown and green, William, dressed in dark pants and a black leather jacket open at the neck to reveal a blue shirt upon which a crucifix glistened like a drop of snow, Misery in his familiar grey leather ensemble consisting of various studs, spikes and chains, and Red in a long dark brown trenchcoat. Lenore, as Ratt had learnt later, had been indisposed at a meeting involving budget cuts in the city.

"Could I have some of that water you've got there?" Tanner had repeated, holding out a hand expectantly. "I'm so thirsty. You know the Sahara? It used to be an ocean before I came along."

The nails poking out from between the green fabric of her fingerless gloves were painted purple and sharpened to a wicked point. That was what had made Ratt hesitate. His hesitation proved ultimately fateful, for it had been at that moment William had noticed the label on the bottle. "Tanner, those are sleeping pills."

Tanner frowned and turned to him, directing her scorn upon her self-proclaimed arch nemesis. "And what would he be doing with sleeping pills at an Eluveitie concert?" she had to speak loudly above the noise, but her disbelief was clear. "Seriously, it's _Eluveitie_. You either sit up and take notice or you get locked up by order of me."

That had made Ratt grin. Even back then, Tanner had been so brash, so utterly confident that she had every right to go sticking her nose into a complete stranger's business. And maybe it was the sheer force of his friend's various personalities that had made Ratt pocket the bottle, join them in headbanging to Inis Mona and eventually receive William's phone number at the end of the concert.

"Call me if you need anything, dude." He had insisted, light eyes intense as they bored into Ratt's. Maybe he had sensed something; something in Ratt's face, maybe, or maybe just because he had caught him about to down sleeping pills in the middle of a screaming mosh pit.

Ratt had only nodded and added William to the contacts in his phone.

Since then, he began noticing them everywhere. One day he would be driving along the street on his motorbike only to notice Misery gaping at him with nothing short of unbridled awe on the kerb. The next he would be getting an ice-cream only to realise with a jolt it was Tanner serving him from behind the counter. They would frequent Carpe Diem too; more often than not, Ratt would catch them up the back discussing something in low voices occasionally raised in uproarious laughter as a battered red pack of playing cards were passed around. Ratt had later learnt that William had been teaching them all poker, only to be continually stumped by Red's magic tricks.

Back then, William and his friends had seemed like the epitome of the exact sort of excitement and fun his life lacked. Ratt would normally have spent the nights tossing and turning in a confused, muddled series of nightmares that involved his mother being brutally murdered to the haunting, angry strains of a funeral organ, or he would have sat up into the early hours of the morning, staring down at William's number as it pulsed steadily on his phone, and asking himself why he never summoned the courage to call it.

One night, he did.

William had picked up on the first ring. The staticy silence had reigned for a long, agonizing moment before William cleared his throat and said, so cheerfully Ratt could almost imagine his grin. "Guess you'll want to go to that Elvenking concert at the Palace Theatre tonight, huh buddy? Let's try aspirin this time."

Ratt had laughed. And the rest, as they said, was history.

His mother's voice snapped him abruptly back into the present with a disorienting jolt. "There you are," she said, turning around as he approached her. "I was getting worried." Her green-gold eyes shifted over him, her disapproval in his appearance portrayed by their subtle narrowing. Even after two years, she still hadn't gotten used to it.

"I was listening to music," Ratt told her, and was rewarded by a small sigh. "What can I do?"

She glanced into the living room where a gaggle of brightly-dressed people were peering at a design of the new townhouses Blu-tacked to the wall. His mother always had cocktail parties whenever she needed to sell; she believed the best way to show people how they could build their dream was by showing them hers. It was a good gimmick, Ratt had to admit, even if it did mean having strangers traipse through his room at weird times. He'd once had an elderly man who looked to be in his sixties inadvertently barge in just when a debate over the phone with Tanner about prostate cancer had reached its peak.

"Just keep an eye on everyone," His mother said tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose between two exquisitely manicured fingernails. "Make sure the brochures are topped up. And if anybody asks about the townhouses…"

"Point them towards you," Ratt finished in a monotone. He had been denoted to the lowly rank of observer ever since he had begun dressing like a Goth two years ago. His mother evidently thought the overall aesthetic of her home would be spoiled if a punk with a questionable taste in fashion began chatting about finance and real estate with her clients. So far, Ratt didn't mind. It beat having to act like he was interested in people's droning about architecture any day.

"Good boy." His mother ruffled his hair then stopped, attention diverted by the arrival of a couple dressed in identical dark suits. Ratt rolled his eyes as his mother crossed the room, heels clicking against the black and white tiles, the epitome of business and efficiency in a plain grey trouser suit even at ten o'clock at night.

"Welcome!" his mother called out when she reached the door. "Please come in, I'm so glad you could make it. I'm Caroline Hart." His mother didn't know them, of course. But an essential part of selling was treating everyone like a familiar face, so she did just that.

"We were in the neighbourhood," one of the couple said as he stepped over the threshold. "We saw the townhouses, and we thought…"

"Have you seen the floor plan? Do you know all the units come with heated bathrooms? A lot of people don't realize what a difference it can make…"

And, just like that, she was off. It was hard to believe that, once upon a time, she had shared her son's dislike for social functions. Ratt's father had been the friendly guy, the one everybody spoke to. Ratt's mother usually only came in to manage the financial side of things; a true Aussie bloke, Ratt's father couldn't have found his way out of his debts with an atlas, so his wife often had to swoop in and help him. They had been a dream team, the perfect couple, with his father charming the prospective clients with his effortless combination of wit and charisma, and his mother grappling with the accounts and architects.

Ratt knew his mother blamed herself for her husband's death, for pushing him too hard towards the end. And, even though she maintained every appearance that she was coping, she was getting over it, Ratt knew all the immaculateness, the perfect posture, the neatly ironed clothes and the "I'm fine," smile were all just a mask, a thin veneer over a gaping chasm of grief.

He just wished she would let him comfort her.

4444

Ratt had just finished pointing a harried-looking woman in the direction of the second-floor bathroom when his mother's voice halted his activity yet again.

"R…" his mother's lips wobbled, hesitating. She hated using the name Ratt had created for himself during his depression, but Ratt had made it perfectly clear he would self-evict himself from the premises if she ever used his given name. She settled upon waving at him, perfectly manicured hand like a lone, fluttering flag. "Dear, could you come here?"

_That's even worse, mum,_ Ratt thought, but nonetheless obeyed. His mother was standing by the kitchen table, a vast wooden structure dominating the centre of the room like an object of worship, strewn with all variety of brochures and blueprints. Standing next to her was a bespectacled man dressed smartly in a black suit. Ratt approached cautiously. The man reminded him rather too much of The Men In Black and, although unbidden, memories of the many movie marathons held with Tanner, Red and Lenore flooded his mind, causing him to smile.

"What's up?" Ratt asked, still grinning as he reached them.

His mother beamed at him. "I was just telling Doctor Batchelder here about your work at the School."

The man made a small noise. "Please, Ms Hart, call me Jeb." He spoke with an American accent and his tone was clipped; polite but not quite friendly, with just enough coldness trapped in his light blue eyes to make Ratt suspicious.

"You just started working at the School today, didn't you?" Ratt's mother prompted Ratt gently, with a meaningful glance towards Jeb. She was always on the look-out for American clients, with the old-fashioned belief that they all possessed limitless wealth.

"Mum, it was just a tour," Ratt reminded her. Jeb's gaze was uncomfortably intense, boring into the side of his head as if he could drill a hole through and examine his thoughts; those piercing blue eyes never wavered.

His mother chose to ignore Ratt's comment. "Doctor… Jeb, you are part of the American branch of the School, you said?"

Ratt almost expected him to bow. "Yes, Ms Hart."

"The School has an American branch?" asked Ratt, surprised.

Jeb looked at him. "Yes. Didn't you know?"

"No," said Ratt, thinking of the small mountain of folders waiting for him upstairs in his room and experiencing a guilty twinge. "I haven't read the basic information yet."

"You would want to. It's very interesting." Jeb sounded almost concerned. All around them people were talking, laughing or just milling aimlessly around, a bright, multi-national congregation, but at that moment it seemed Jeb had eyes only for him. "You're at the School as part of your college degree?"

Ratt shook his head, uncomfortable. "I've already gotten a PHD in Genetics." it occurred to him that the American tertiary education system was different to the Australian, so he stopped.

"Really?" Apparently understanding, Jeb raised an eyebrow, eyeing him up and down with a speculative expression. "You're very young."

Ratt laughed awkwardly, resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair as he often did when feeling nervous or embarrassed. "Yeah, people always tell me that."

"He's also a very bright young man." Caroline gave a small, dry cough, gently steering the topic away from the issue of different education systems. "So, Doctor, tell me, what exactly is it that you do at the School?"

Jeb looked up at her and Ratt caught his blue eyes suddenly turn frigid. In that moment, a trace of the weird, dark sort of coldness that had plagued Ratt ever since he had set foot in the Director's corridor seemed to flash across the surface of Jeb's face, making the hairs on the back of Ratt's neck stand up. "I am terribly sorry, Ms Hart." There was a definite iciness to Jeb's voice now. "But all our information is classified."

Ratt's mother looked confused. "But I… all right." She looked at Ratt, and Ratt could sense she was looked for a confirmation; some sort of explanation as to why it hadn't all been explained to her sooner. "Ratt, do you know why…?"

Ratt shrugged helplessly. The truth was, he had been putting off reading the Director's files on the School's work ever since he had first gotten home; the strange creeping feeling from the labs had seemed to follow his every step of the day, and his friend's comments in Carpe Diem had also quite put him off. _But you can't back out,_ Ratt reminded himself.

Ratt realized Jeb was asking him a question and tuned in.

"How did you find the tour?"

"It was fine," Ratt answered, a little dishonestly. He sure as hell wasn't going to tell what he really thought of the School's facilities to a man who sounded as though he had worked there all his life, no matter how creepy the School was. "It was very… interesting."

Jeb's eyes crinkled at the corners. Ratt wasn't sure if he was pleased or skeptical. "That's good."

An awkward silence fell. Ratt shifted, wishing he could turn away from the man's icy blue gaze, but something in the crisp way Jeb held himself commanded his utter respect and attention, and he couldn't look away.

"Ratt's starting officially tomorrow," Caroline said suddenly, clearing wanting to induct herself back into the conversation as soon as possible. "That means an early night for you, doesn't it?" She smiled at him but Ratt could see her teeth gritted behind the pale pink lips, her unspoken message as clear as if it had been hissed. _Stop distracting my client and get up there and read those folders _now_ so you don't look like a complete idiot when you show up tomorrow. _

"Yes… I have to go," Ratt tried to excuse himself as politely as possible but next to Jeb's effortless perfection, the attempt seemed like a dismal failure. "It was nice meeting you, Doctor Batchelder."

Jeb nodded coolly, but didn't respond, and Ratt could feel his gaze burning into his back all the way across the room and up the stairs.

4444

"What do you think of him?"

Jeb looked up. "Who?"

The obvious scorn in the Director's dark gaze left him feeling cold and unsettled. Slowly his small, white hands rose in a fluid motion, fingers steepling in front of him almost as if in prayer as a small sigh hissed out between his lips. "Our new intern."

"Caroline Hart's son?" Jeb cast his mind back to the oddly-dressed young man he had encountered at the cocktail party. "He seems trustworthy enough."

"Heh." Slowly the Director rose from behind the desk, crossing the room in a single long stride to stand by the window. The star-spangled inkiness of the night sky peeped in between the Venetian blinds, the radiance of the moon casting long fingers of white light into the room. "We will take precautions," the Director murmured, slipping a long finger in between the slats and peering through the opening. On the street below a car beeped its horn, swerving wildly along the dark road.

Jeb understood the reason for the Director's concern. New staff at the School generally had to be tested very thoroughly in terms of trustworthiness and reliability. The fact they were hiring a young man barely out of college was unusual enough, but… well, the Australian branch of the School had never been exactly organized. A tiny facility consisting of only nine laboratories, it was a struggle to produce much of anything worthwhile, and would have fallen into bankruptcy and been taken down were it not for the careful management of the branch's Director. Jeb knew they had several more Schools scattered around Australia – he'd heard something about a larger one in Sydney– but all in all, the Australian branches of the School, on average, just didn't seem to produce to the standard of their American counterparts. Whether it was from different financial issues or governmental restrictions, Jeb didn't know. But what he did know…

"Forgive me, Director, but I have been asked to come here to tell you that _the_ Director, Marian Jensen, has, unfortunately, said that if your School fails to produce any viable experiments within the next five years, then I'm afraid we will have to take this facility down." Jeb tried to sound firm despite the fear that caught at his throat as the Director slowly turned to face him, dark eyes blazing now.

Jeb was well aware that the Director was what another might call 'crazy'. Although never officially diagnosed with anything in particular, his unpredictability was the sole reason why Marian Jensen bothered to keep track of him as intensely as she did. Itexicon had no room for weak links, and the Director of the Melbourne School clearly was one.

"Are you telling me…" the Director said slowly, childlike hands clenching around the windowsill. His eyes were twin black fires burning into Jeb's now; he had never felt so uncomfortable in all his life. "That this School is slated to be put down?"

Jeb flinched. "Not if you can produce any viable experiments within the next…"

"But we did!" the Director's outraged cry held the petulant note of a small child. His hand rose and then descended, thumping the windowsill. "Those fungi…"

"Were not viable." Jeb held his gaze steady despite the intimidating way those black eyes glared at him from sunken sockets. "They expired on the way to _the_ Director." His emphasis on the word 'the' served as a reminder that, however much he wished it, to a point where he had even adopted Marian Jensen's title, the Director of the Melbourne School could not and _would not_ ever be made head of Itexicon.

The Director pinched the bridge of his nose between two shaking fingers in barely suppressed rage, his shoulders trembling. "I have spent the past fifteen years trying to whip this School into some sort of shape, and now you're telling me it's getting shut down?"

"Not if you can produce any viable experiments within the next five years." Jeb repeated, wishing the Director would calm down and listen to him.

The Director's trembling stilled, and the sudden, odd calm was even more terrifying than his rage. "So you're saying…" he murmured, head cocked to one side as if in thought. His eyes widened. "That if we were to create something extraordinary…"

"Then your facility will be cleared to continue," Jeb confirmed, wondering uneasily what was going through the man's mind. More out of curiosity than anything else he asked, with a hint of trepidation in his voice. "What are you planning on making?"

The Director's teeth bared in a startlingly white grin. "Oh, I don't know, something along the lines of a transgenic…"

Jeb felt the blood drain from his face. "But… Director, forgive me, your School doesn't have the proper facilities to safely create a transgenic hybrid…"

"We have laboratories." The Director's voice was icily calm. "And we have efficient staff." Another flash of that petrifying grin. "We may not have the facilities you American Schools have, but we do have efficiency. And, at the end of the day, efficiency is all you really need."

Jeb swallowed. The Director was clearly insane. He had just spent the past several minutes repeating that he had been the one to save the Melbourne School from financial ruin, and then started planning a venture that, if not highly unsuccessful, would easily send them back down into bankruptcy again.

"I… understand." But his voice sounded distant even to his own ears. Jeb made a mental note to alert Marian Jensen of the Director's plans as soon as possible. "I will be going now."

The farewell was met by yet another grin, but this one was stark and plain in its coldness; a brief curl of the lips before the Director turned back to the window again, black eyes burning as he stared out into the night, mind filled with plans of what was to come.

4444

Dawn was quick to climb the sky over Melbourne, the sun suffusing the pale blue sky with rosy hues and golden light. Down amidst the vast buildings and houses ringed the glittering band of blue that was the Yarra River, tranquil waters a pearly, surreal reflection of the sky above.

Ratt stifled a yawn as he drove up the street, hunching into his jacket in a vain attempt to blot out the chilled dawn breeze. The dark windows of the School were burnished to a bright shine, and Ratt squinted against the unexpected light as he led his motorbike back into the spot he had occupied the day before. Déjà vu caught at him with dark fingers as he turned off the engine. Stifling yet another massive yawn, Ratt slid unsteadily off his bike, running a hand through his windswept hand in an attempt to smooth it.

"Morning," Marianne's honk accompanied the whirr of the automatic door opening as he entered. The old woman seemed unusually alert for this early an hour, and was already clutching a mug of what Ratt presumed to be coffee in between her wizened hands. Ratt was already trudging forward before she beckoned him forward with a hand, fingernails painted purple this time. "Here's your key."

"Key?" Ratt mumbled, catching it just as Marianne threw it at him.

Marianne narrowed her eyes at him. "For your locker. Your uniform should be in there. You do know where the locker rooms are, right?"

"No," Ratt snapped, closing his fist so the ridges of the key bit into his palm. He was already exhausted from staying up all night to read all of the Director's folders and thus running dangerously late, and his bag had resumed its pounding of his hip, leaving the whole of his left side numb and tingling. Even as he stood there he yawned, swaying slightly as he rubbed his eyes.

Marianne's expression softened slightly and she thrust the mug at him. "Here, have some. The locker rooms are over there," she pointed with a single purple fingernail at a door at the far end of the lobby. Ratt was too busy taking a slow sip of the caffeinated beverage to do more than give a brief nod of thanks.

"Thank you," Marianne snatched the mug back mid-draught, leaving Ratt suddenly spluttering. Protectively arching her fingers around the white china, Marianne continued, paying no attention to Ratt's coughs. "You should go and get dressed before Doctor Nadezhda comes."

"Doctor Nadezhda… she's my supervisor, right?"

Marianne nodded with a small sniff, as if she thought Doctor Nadezhda was clearly beneath her. "She'll show you everything you need to do here,"

_Everything I _need_ to do, huh?_ Ratt thought wryly as he headed off towards the locker rooms.

4444

The locker room was deserted, and nearly as cold as outside. Goosebumps sprang up along Ratt's arms beneath the fabric of his black shirt as he walked in, the sound of his boots connecting with the worn blue tiles amplified by the vast empty space. There were no windows, only flickering fluorescent lights that cast a sickly glow over the tall, peeling blue lockers.

Ratt's eyes went to the gold key still rolling about his palm, training on the numerals scratched into the metal at the top. "42," he muttered, and immediately wished he hadn't. Rather like the Director's corridor, the locker room seemed to swallow the bulk of all sound and reduce it to a puny whine, the thin echoes ricocheting off the whitewashed walls.

He soon found the locker – a small one squatting almost shyly against the wall, blue paint flaking off in long strips to reveal the silver metal beneath. The locker door struggled open with a harsh squeal of rusted hinges, revealing a neatly folded white labcoat wrapped in what seemed to be the compulsory layer of clear plastic, resting patiently on the bottom of the locker. Distaste rose to his throat even before he unwrapped it and felt the stiffness of the material. The coat seemed to glow off-white in the pallid light and what he could feel of the thick fabric through his fingerless gloves felt coarse and unmanageable.

A cursory glance around the room revealed no bathroom one might change in, so Ratt shrugged and slid off his jacket. Dumping the discarded garment in the locker, he pulled on the offending coat, wrinkling his nose at the smell of bleach rising in strong waves off the fabric. Another quick flash of his gold-green eyes around the locker room revealed a small rectangular mirror hanging crookedly on the wall.

Seeing his reflection in the mirror, he blinked. Then frowned.

The white labcoat hung like a sheet of caustically bright snow draped around his shoulders, arching in a long looping neckline that displayed some of the black shirt beneath. The sharp angle of his shoulders only drew eye to the jagged line of his hair, hacked and tufted as it was. His black fingerless gloves and snake-bite piercings looked equally odd in contrast to the stark air of efficiency the labcoat cast. Ratt's frown grew as his eyes travelled up to his face. Now, with the unwanted addition of the coat, the eyeliner ringing each eye looked nothing more than a thin rim, hardly visible even if he squinted.

"I look like a really weird businessman," Ratt whispered, revolted. His hand automatically crept to the ever-present tube of eyeliner in his pocket and worked at unscrewing the top. "We'll see…"

For the face staring back at him looked uncomfortably like his father and that particular topic, even though his father had died two years ago, was still painful enough to bring a lump to his throat and a revitalized attempt to banish the similarities. The rings of black around his eyes were thickened, strengthened and, for good measure, Ratt decided to add a few stylised spikes flaring out towards his eyebrows and nose.

A small cough sounded behind him. "Excuse me…"

"GAAH!" Ratt shrieked and whirled around, hands automatically rising to flap around his head as they always did when he was startled. "Don't do that! I always…"

His exclamation trailed off, and he examined the person in front of him more closely. The woman was dressed in a white labcoat identical to his, and had a neat row of pens poking out from the breast pocket. Her straight black hair framed an oval-shaped face set with two chocolate brown eyes.

"You are…" Evgenia inquired, her accent as thick as it had been when Ratt had met her in the lift. Her eyes glinted in amusement as they lingered on the tube of eyeliner still in his hand. "Our new intern, yes?"

Ratt flushed, and shoved the eyeliner back in his pocket. "Um… yes."

They stared at each other, and Ratt was uncomfortably aware of that 'um', hanging in the air. He shifted, cleared his throat and said more clearly. "Yes."

The corners of Evgenia's mouth twitched in a small smile. "Right. I'm Doctor Nadezhda, your supervisor. I'll show you around and explain what it is we do here."

Ratt hesitated. "Right. Um, can I…?" he gestured behind him at his open locker.

"Of course," Evgenia watched without expression as Ratt bundled up his jacket and bag and slung them into his locker, wincing at the harsh screech as he closed the door.

"Anyway," Evgenia continued as if she hadn't been interrupted. "You can follow me for the day, just to get the hang of things. I'll explain your duties as we go," Her voice had moulded itself into a crisp, business-like tone that her accent only served to strengthen. Ratt scrambled to his feet, praying he would make no mistakes.

Evgenia checked her watch. "You're actually a bit late," her voice held a note of apology in it, as if personally asking forgiveness for the School's hideously early hours. Her brown eyes were warm, and the edge of tension that had been with Ratt since he had woken up started to soften. "People will probably be in the full swing of things by now, so we'll just have to tag along and see what they're up to."

"Sorry," Ratt cringed as they exited the locker room. In that small moment where his head dipped he caught sight of his shoelaces, trailing long and ugly and black against the blurred line where the tiles somehow seemed to fade into the beige carpet of the lobby.

Evgenia smiled at him. "That's alright, no harm down." Tugging briefly on each lapel to smooth a non-existent crease, she headed purposefully towards the lifts. From the other end of the lobby, Marianne watched her from behind her coffee cup with narrowed eyes.

Ratt followed her. "Um…" it occurred to him he should say something; what if Marianne wanted her for something? "Marianne…"

"Ignore her," Evgenia said in an undertone, steering him towards the lifts. "She's been a bit bitter ever since she got the job as a receptionist. Anyway…" she poked at the lift button and waited patiently for the lift to descend. "So, you're taking this as part of your university course?" her tone held a playfully mocking tone.

"I've already finished my PHD in Genetics," answered Ratt. A memory of one of Tanner's imitations '…of course you cannot go on a musical career, music is for drug-addicts and other dangerous folk that will inevitably lead you to an early end and an overall unfulfilled life..." shivered through his head and he gritted his teeth.

Evgenia blinked in surprise, but recovered quickly. "…I see. That's impressive." The lift doors opened with a rattling wheeze and she stepped in, Ratt following hesitantly in her wake. "You've read all the information in the booklets, haven't you?"

Ratt couldn't restrain a grimace as he thought of the long hours he had spent poring over the tiny, cramped words of the folders last night. "Yeah."

Evgenia quirked an eyebrow at him. "Well, under the Director's guidance, the lab I work in, Lab 04, began operating using a different method of genetic science than what we normally do. We originally used genetic counselling to diagnose and evaluate patients with hereditary conditions or congenital disorders, but we've had to close that project down due to budget cuts. Now we use DNA sequences primarily for transgenesis, normally through bioballistics, which you would have heard from your information booklets. You're following me?"

Ratt's head was spinning. Budget cuts and DNA, he had gotten that much "I… I think so." He had just read the terms in one of the Director's papers, but it was still a struggle to follow her. Ratt was beginning to realize that, just because he had understood everything moderately well in print, book-learning didn't necessarily apply to the real world. "Isn't transgenisis where you introduce a new gene into another organism?" he mentally congratulated himself on the scientific words.

Evgenia nodded, pleased Ratt knew enough to understand what she was saying without her having to explain everything. "The School has just started working on that. Granted our methods aren't a hundred percent perfect yet…" her mouth puckered briefly in a grimace before she continued speaking. "But you should get the hang of it."

The doors screeched as they opened at the third floor. As a man dressed in a white lab coat carrying a large cardboard box in his arms started through, the lift doors began to jerk shut like the metal jaws of a monster attempting to procure a leg or two for its midday meal.

"Ah." Evgenia said suddenly, smiling. "Ratt, this is Nick Hubermann, one of our computer technicians. Nick, this is Ratt, our new intern."

"Morning," Nick grunted over the box.

"Hi," Ratt said nervously.

"This is our floor," Evgenia piped up, just as the lift doors dinged the signal for the fifth floor. They got out, the lift doors rattling shut over Nick's farewell mumble. Evgenia instantly headed off down the corridor, black wedge heels clicking briskly against the smooth white tiling. Ratt blinked in the light; everything in the corridor seemed a blinding white, a long hallway leading straight to a locked grey door at the far end. The pristine white walls flung the echoes around like children in a snowball fight, making Ratt's ears ring.

"I'll be working in lab four today with Doctor Jean and Doctor Phillip. We're all working on a new project of the Director's. Feel free to ask if you have any questions." Evgenia said over her shoulder. With a start, Ratt picked up the pace, following along in her wake as she walked towards the grey door.

"Are you leading me to Hell?" Ratt asked apprehensively; the grey door gave off a slightly foreboding feeling, from the unusually thick-looking hinges to the slightly crooked plaque in the centre, reading LABORATORY 04 in a messy black scrawl.

Evgenia raised an eyebrow at him and laughed quietly, reaching out a hand for the door. "Well, you know what they say; it depends on what you make of it." She pushed open the door.

Ratt's eyes had a second to adjust to the brightness; the laboratory they had entered was, like the corridor, completely white, with no windows. The tiled white floor was criss-crossed by a number of dark, skinny computer cords, trailing away into shadows beneath the small tables scattered at random throughout the room.

But then Ratt's eyes focused on the table that dominated the middle, and he felt bile rise to his throat. His legs nearly gave out. "What the hell?!"

Two men in white coats were standing over the table, pinning down the limp, struggling body of what looked like a live bird, as they both raised scalpels dripping red with blood.

"Oh good," said Evgenia, sounding delighted. "You've started already."

4444

_This is so embarrassing, _Misery thought. He didn't need to look in a mirror to know that his face was turning pink. He swallowed and pulled the book closer to his face, hiding behind the battered copy of Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment as he watched Monica make her way around the tables. Carpe Diem's head chef didn't allow for the usual crowbar separation between waiting tables and cooking. She allowed the staff rotating shifts so they could do either as the fancy took them.

_It's proof of her generosity, _Misery thought, with a pang of longing. He flipped a few pages, not really concentrating even as the words slipped past under his nose. He swallowed several times, grey gloved hands stiffening against the book cover. _Why don't I just talk to her? _A quick glance upwards at her back and her long, rippling black hair made him quickly look back to his book, face now flaming hot enough to light the pages. _No, she wouldn't want to talk to a guy like me. I'm too weird, and she's too…_

He heaved a small sigh, and murmured under his breath. "Perfect." She was perfect.

He had been coming to Carpe Diem for weeks now. Not just to eat, but to read, and to be near enough to Monica to catch the light in her eyes, the adorable little dimples that sprang to life on her cheeks whenever she smiled. _God, _Misery thought nervously, turning a page as Monica walked nearer. His face reddened even more, and he hid himself behind the book again. _I'm such a stalker. _

"Good book?"

Misery's stomach flipped so hard he nearly gagged. "Hhngg…!"

"Oh, come now." Monica smiled at him. "I'm sure it's not _that _bad."

Misery should have said something witty, something charming, but at that moment his mind had gone completely blank. "It's… ah… good?"

Monica craned her neck to peer at the cover. "What's it called?"

Misery felt himself calm. This was good. Books he could handle. "Um… it's by Feodor Dostoyevsky."

Seeing her quizzical look, he mentally kicked himself. "Um… he's a Russian writer." He had a lightning moment. "Oh! Er… do you want to read it?" he pushed the book at her.

Monica waved it off with a laugh and a smile and Misery's heart ached as those dimples showed. "Thanks buddy, but I've got tables to wait. Maybe some other time." She nodded at the cup of cooled coffee standing on the table. "Do you want another?"

Misery shrank back into his seat, heart deflating in his chest. "Oh, um… no thanks."

_Well that, _Misery despaired as he watched her leave, _had been a failure. _

"Hey Misery."

Mihael started at the sound of Ratt's voice, swivelling around to look up at the face of his friend. He opened his mouth, about to voice a return greeting, when he caught sight of Ratt's face, and his voice shrivelled and died in his throat.

Ratt looked _exhausted_. He was wearing an odd sort of white coat that Misery presumed to be the uniform at the School. Even as Misery watched, Ratt swayed on his feet, and raised a hand to his face to cover a large yawn.

"Tired?" Misery asked sympathetically, pulling up a chair for him. Ratt lowered his head, running a hand slowly through his ragged brown hair with a yawn.

"Misery…" Ratt said quietly. Misery barely recognized his voice; gone was the normal lilt, the easiness of speaking. His new voice was quiet and tired, consonants reduced to a low rasp.

"Huh?" Misery ventured when Ratt did not elaborate.

Ratt raised his head and Misery caught a quick flash of something foreign, something new, a fire that hadn't been there before burning in the back of Ratt's eyes that made fear close its fist around Misery's throat.

"What do you reckon," Ratt's voice was slow and pondering as he traced invisible patterns on the table with one finger. "Monica would say if I became vegetarian?"

4444

To Be Continued...

* * *

Notes:

Only a measly 17 pages in this one XD I'm disappointed.

**Q&A Time:** In this chapter, the song Siraxta is mentioned. What does it mean?


	3. A Storm Is Gathering

**Project: Angel **

**Part I**

**by Inspirationally Red**

**Chapter 3**

**A Storm Is Gathering **

4444

The wind buffeting him as he drove along was so strong it nearly flung him off. For a moment, having corrected his posture for the fourth time, Ratt considered getting off his motorbike and wheeling it home by hand, but discarded the idea. His arms felt like dead weights in front of him, fingers curled around the motorbike's handles, and his mouth pulled open into a yawn, so big it made his ears crackle.

The lights of Melbourne blurred past, flickering wildly like demented fireflies around him. The buildings and sky-scrapers were tainted red in the light from the sunset, putting Ratt in mind of rows of long, bloodstained knives jutting from the earth. Lengthening shadows sprouted thickly along the footpaths, dispersed only by the fake neon light of many shop windows, and Ratt thought of a million monsters crouching in those shadows, with blood-red eyes and slavering jaws.

Ratt loved Melbourne in the hours between the afternoon and night. The city's daytime industriousness slowed to a thin trickle; trains chimed their way down metal runners, swallowing and disgorging a colourful rabble of people onto the streets. The uniform plane trees on the nature strip reached up towards a rapidly darkening sky, thick branches and spindly twigs raised almost as if in reverence, the light from the streetlamps touching their leaves with the colour of rust and dark verdigris copper.

People were walking and running their way through the street, backpacks and briefcases swinging from backs and hands, tired, haggard faces lit with a sickly glow from the shop windows. Watching them in the breaks between traffic light changes, Ratt wondered where they were going; what they had done to earn them such tiredness, why they clutched their briefcases so protectively.

It occurred to him he might be slightly hypocritical; his hand crept unconsciously towards his overflowing black bag, and a small, rueful smile touched his lips. The smile was quickly obliterated by a yawn, which fled with a jolt as soon as the lights changed and Ratt accelerated forward.

His first day as an intern at the School had been, to be blunt, a living hell. First there had been the ungodly hour they had expected him to arrive – 6:00 in the morning! – then there'd been the incident in the locker room with Doctor Nadezhda… Ratt cringed silently in embarrassment as he recalled the day, each incident causing the frown on his face to deepen. Then there'd been that nightmare dissection in Lab 04. Ratt had watched his fair share of violent movies in his time, he thought he knew how to handle the sight of blood, but it turned out his stomach just wasn't used to coping with a _live_ dissection. He'd ended up fleeing for the bathroom and, finding there wasn't one in the lab, he'd ended up having to use one of the sinks used for flushing chemicals.

Doctor Jeffrey Winters, one of the four scientists assigned to Lab 04, hadn't been impressed _at all. _

After that severe embarrassment, the various internal organs of the bird had had to be sorted and placed in separate tanks, where they would be preserved for further study by a variety of chemicals. Ratt had gotten the number of the tanks completely confused and ended up dumping most of the feathers inside the one meant for the heart. The other scientists had asked he be excused from any work requiring precision, so he'd been shunted off to handle the main lab's computer and its mainframe under the assistance of Doctor Nadezhda.

That, at least, he'd aced. Ratt grinned as he remembered Evgenia's surprise as he revealed his expertise with computers. A quick scan had revealed a hard-drive crawling with viruses, so Ratt had spent most of the morning fixing and strengthening the School's servers, to the awe of the School's decidedly hopeless computer technicians.

Then after lunch… Ratt groaned quietly as he had recalled what had happened after the short break at twelve o'clock. Evgenia and her cohorts in Lab 04 had moved on to using bioballistics, which involved injecting the cells of a lab rat with DNA they had obtained from the dissected bird. Ratt had been baffled by what Doctor Nadezhda had referred to as a gene gun, apparently newly purchased for the School by the Director.

Then he'd gotten lost on the way to Lab 06 to pick up some spare petri dishes, and had his first run in with a security guard. Ratt had nearly had a heart attack when he'd rounded the corner and nearly ploughed into him; the security guard was your typical man mountain in a black suit, and didn't improve matters by demanding to see Ratt's identification papers, which he'd lost.

Having finally convinced the guard, he'd wandered back to Lab 04, realized he'd forgotten the petri dishes, and doubled back, only to find himself lost for the second time. He'd found himself standing outside the door to one of the basement levels, and would have gone in if it weren't for the noises he'd heard.

It had been weird standing outside the door and listening in; a strange cacophony of beeping, whistling, growling, howling and moaning that made his hair stand on end. And, at that moment, who should come up behind him but the Director himself. The Director seemed to have been considerably angrier than when Ratt had first met him, and had all but screamed at him until Ratt had escaped up the corridor and back to Lab 04.

Then he realized he'd forgotten the petri dishes again.

4444

Ratt's footsteps were loud against the worn wooden boards of the porch as he walked up to the front door of his house, gripping hold of the banister to support himself. He'd shifted his bag to his other shoulder to provide some respite for his aching hip; the lack of pain was an enormous comfort as he climbed the last of the stairs. His keys jingled, sounding abnormally loud inside the silence as he twirled them absently around his index finger by the loop. Ratt slid the keys off his finger and inserted one – the gold one with the pointy end, not the gold one with the teeth than looked like a mountain range; he had schooled himself to remember – into the lock. He met slight resistance as the key turned, but soon the heavy green door swung open with a slither of hinges.

"I'm home!" he called, stepping into the dark house. His voice rang out flat and unanswered; it was more of a ritual than anything else. His mother worked most of the day, only padding home in the early hours of the morning, having worked through most of the night in the clutter of the real estate agent's office.

Ratt's boots thumped out their familiar tattoo against the carpeted floor as he staggered down the hallway, emerging into the wide, open kitchen. The kitchen was cold and unlit, and Ratt let out an irritated huff, pressing one hand wearily against the lightswitch as he passed. The resulting blaze of bright yellow light made him scrunch up his eyes as he navigated his way across the kitchen counter, dumping his bag onto the smooth stone surface without ceremony. Snatching an apple from the fruit bowl, Ratt made his way towards the stairs at the far end of the kitchen. The carpeted spiral staircase seemed impossibly high and dizzying in its never-ending loops, and he barely managed to stagger his way up them.

Ratt could barely manage undoing the many bolts and locks that lined the doorframe of his room, his fingers fumbling and bumping blindly against the metal in his tiredness. Finally finished, Ratt heaved opened the door and proceeded to stumble over to his bed, standing proudly in the centre of the room. His room was roughly rectangular, with the far wall acting as a massive set of cupboards for various clothes and other memorabilia. Another wall was simply a gargantuan window looking out into the only balcony in the house. A portion of this window slid back, acting as a door out onto the wide stone terrace. The rest of the walls were hung with a number of band posters, from AFI to Linkin Park, and a trail of red Chinese lanterns Tanner had given him for New Year's Day hung proudly across one corner of the ceiling.

Ratt flopped down onto the puffy blue doona, feeling the fabric automatically puff in reaction to his weight. Casting his head back, Ratt stared up at the ceiling and the spiderweb of cracks that marred the otherwise perfect expanse of pale cream paint. He lay there, listening to the silence, occasionally taking a bite out of his apple.

Then his phone rang.

He lay there for a long moment, not willing to do anything, until the insistent alarm ringtone he had set for his mother prompted him to move. Rescuing his iPhone from the depths of his pocket, he answered.

"Hello?"

His mother's voice came back to him instantly. Calm, polite and well-modulated, a fitting tone for a real estate agent. "Hello, honey, I'm just calling to let you know I won't be home until late tonight."

That was hardly a surprise. She'd been coming home late all week. "Okay."

"There's some leftover pizza in the fridge if you want to microwave it for dinner."

"Okay." Ratt repeated. So many of his conversations with his mother felt like a monotone, a meaningless exchange of advice he had heard so many times before.

"I'll probably be back around eleven."

"Okay."

"How was your first day?"

Ratt thought back to the School, the accidents and incidents, the embarrassments. "It was fine. Goodbye mum."

"Goodbye sweetie."

He would have gone to sleep right then and there but a strange sort of restlessness had overtaken him, disabling his ability to sit still. He simply had too many thoughts about the disaster of the first day at the School running through his head. Sitting up, he slipped off his labcoat and flung it in the direction of the washing basket. Casting his gaze around the room for something to do came up with nothing, so he did what he always did when he needed to take his mind off something.

He sang.

It started off as a voiceless hum building gradually into words. Lyrics had never been his forte, so he sang whatever words he found in his head, plucked from the all songs he had heard.

"Take all my longings and believe them… If you know… I breathe, but I don't want to be there… These are the things I have to know…"

Juice from the blood-red apple ran cold across his lips as he lay in the rapidly darkening room.

4444

Moments before it sounded, Ratt's hand was already moving, descending subconsciously through the foggy, half-asleep layers cloaking his mind in preparation for the slap that would successfully silence his alarm clock.

_Beep, beep, beep…_

The clock's plastic casing squeaked indignantly as he clawed at it, successfully managing to plunge the dark room into silence. For a moment he laid there, ears ringing with the silence, half-open eyes only vaguely registering the pale bars of gold sunlight peeping shyly through the gaps in his curtain. He lay snuggled into his doona, feeling the weight of the bright blue fabric, debating mentally whether to get up or to roll over and fall asleep again. It was a short fight; the thin string of rebellion frayed and crumbled before it had fully formed. A short groan bulleted past his lips and he tumbled haphazardly from the bed, feet icy where the soles pressed against the still-cold floor.

A yawn dragged his lips back as he stooped to snatch his labcoat off the floor, grimacing at the already-familiar feel of the stiff fabric. He'd never gotten around to washing it yesterday, opting instead to spend the gathering dusk in his room listening to CDs before an early dinner. Ratt blinked blearily, winced as the movement delivered a throb of pain to his eyelids, and slouched off to the bathroom. The scorching hot jet of water and thick steam brought a brief relief from the cold before he dressed himself, shivering at the drops of water trailing across his skin as he reapplied the habitual layer of eyeliner.

The air in the house was still and heavy, seeming to swarm down Ratt's throat and nostrils like icy water – the central heating hadn't kicked in yet. Shadows layered the walls as he shuffled along the hallway, the dull, early-morning light seeming to drain the vicinity of colour. The brunette paused on the way past his mother's bedroom and pushed the heavy, dark wood door open a crack, peering in.

Everything in his mother's room remained the same – pristine and untouched. The duvet on the bed hung at regulation length down the sides, the cover folded back, pillows and cushions immaculately arranged like a display in a shop window. Her jewellery box remained closed on the nightstand, a single black dress shirt that looked as though it had never been worn tossed over the back of a small wooden chair in one corner. A single shaft of sunlight from the window fell at an odd angle across the cover, the only thing out of place in an otherwise pristine scene.

_Pleasantville _revisited…

Ratt resisted the urge to step inside, and continued down the hall. His breath clouded white in the air, footsteps sounding oddly metallic where they connected with the pale carpet. For a moment, he could almost imagine he had woken up in a black and white film; he could almost hear the distant crackle of a gramophone issuing scratchy bars of jazz music.

Then he padded into the kitchen, and his mother broke the illusion. She was folded, neat and as angular as the wing of a bird, dressed in a sleek blue suit. Corn-blonde ringlets framed a face blurred with creamy makeup – Ratt had always had his father's hair colour – and she seemed slightly off-focused. Her chair was drawn close to the kitchen counter, the pale arch of her arm smooth and graceful where it contrasted with the blackness. The scratch of her pen against the pile of documents pervaded over the hum of the kitchen appliances, and for a moment Ratt stood, watching her.

"Ah." she looked up and saw him, a wide, contrived stretch of day-old pink lipstick a half-hearted shadow of smile. Her hand stilled against the white pages, and Ratt wished she could keep going; the scratch of the pencil had been a welcome distraction from the chill, an iciness he knew didn't come from the cold. "Look at you. That coat looks absolutely at home on you."

Ratt looked down at himself and remembered what he had seen in the mirror – the thick white fabric, the black nail polish, the jagged hairline contrasting with the rigid line of his shoulders. "Thanks Mum."

"You forgot to unpack your bag again, didn't you?" Caroline's change of subject was a low murmur, voice absent as her eyes drifted down to the sheets again. Ratt moved behind the counter to the shelves, scanning them for some sign of an edible breakfast. "I did it for you, but please, try to remember next time."

She pointed to his black bag with a single manicured fingernail, and Ratt paused. A hundred things to ask built on the tip of his tongue. He thought about asking his mother how her work had gone last night. He thought of asking her what about she was writing.

None of those made it to Ratt's lips. Instead he simply scooped up the bag with a murmur of "Sorry Mum.". He felt too tired to run a hand through his hair, so he took a bite of his hastily buttered toast.

"That's alright dear," Caroline sighed. Ratt felt her tired, sad eyes pressing against the back of his lab coat all the way across the kitchen, until he settled down in a nearby chair to tie up the laces of his Converse. The rising sun rendered the kitchen in a tableau of watercolour pale shades, lending everything a fragile, paper-thin air, as though he'd gotten trapped inside a painting.

A low tsk slid from his mother's throat as he straightened. "Makeup again. How many times have I told you about that? You used to look so much like…" her voice stuttered and died like a flame going out, and his mother stared into the distance, a pale wraith with big, sad eyes.

Ratt's sigh was small, but not quiet enough for his mother not to hear. "Goodbye Mum."

The toast crackled and complained beneath his biting teeth. In the dimness of the room, his mother perched like a spectre against a black backdrop, a single, half-hearted wave tossed to him like a silver coin spinning in the depths a well.

"She'll get over it," the doctors had said.

_Yeah right, _Ratt thought.

4444

The clatter of laptop keys sent writhing dark shadows smudging up the pale walls. In amidst the layers of charcoal and bruise-purple shades, a pair of narrowed eyes swept across lines of cramped text.

_To: The Director (Melbourne)_

_From: The Institute of Higher Living [Board] (New York) _

_It has come to our attention at the Institute that you plan to create a recombinant human hybrid. _

_We beg you not to. It has come to our attention from Doctor Batchelder's recent visits that your facilities simply do not have the required equipment, nor the financial stability, to successfully recreate experiments to the standard of the American branch, if that is indeed what you are intending. _

_We must inform you that, upon alerting the board of Itexicon about your ventures, they have not authorized your plans, as the situations surrounding your School simply do not allow for any experiments beyond what you can currently afford. _

_Also, a recent review of your School's facilities have revealed an alarming tendency to hire staff with no notion of trustworthiness, and not tell them about the ulterior motive behind the School. Such a course of action, we feel, is unadvisable. Simply put, how long can you keep everybody in the dark? Such a method of keeping two motives apart from one another is not only dangerous and would compromise the security of Itexicon, but is also, we feel, foolhardy if you want trustworthy staff. Might we suggest a new method of 'filtering' out staff you deem unworthy, and 'screening' those you do? _

_Unless of course your experiment proves a failure and your School gets closed, in which case, we really do not see the problem. _

The snap of the laptop cover slamming shut betrayed the Director's extreme frustration. He stood up, pushing his chair back, the dark fabric of his coat catching at the wood of the desk. His chair hit the carpet with a muffled bang as he stormed out of the room.

4444

The ride to the School was a slow one. The morning stillness hung heavy on the horizon, a sheen of dense grey fog building in the air. Cars flickered at the edges of Ratt's peripheral vision, sliding through the silence like gently purring ghosts. It was an eerie sort of quiet, even for such an early hour, and Ratt couldn't help thanking at least some of it was marred by the churning echo of his motorbikes engine and Red's voice as the Northern Irishman chattered rapidly over the phone.

"So then I asked Tanner whether she would get together with Misery and she was like 'Noooo…' and then I asked 'But why?' I mean, seriously, they would make the cutest couple ever! And I know she likes him _anyway…_"

Ratt could almost picture Red bouncing in his seat, and raised an eyebrow. "Okay, Red, how much coffee have you had?" The lights turned green and he accelerated forward, pressing the iPhone protectively to his ear so he wouldn't inadvertently drop it.

"Only five cups, why?"

"Yeah, well, I think you might want to pace yourself." He turned left into a back street.

Red's voice was condescending. "Mate, I've been a barista for a good three years, I think I know what I'm doing."

"Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you when you end up pushing up daisies due to caffeine overdose. Doesn't one of your weird Greek mythology books advise against drinking?"

"That's Celtic, the Greeks came _after_, unless you want to count the _ancient_ Greeks… and anyway, it's not alcohol, it's coffee, so what's the problem?"

Ratt sighed, and resigned himself to the fact he was never going to put Red off his coffee no matter how hard he tried. "Fine, fine."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, there's a book signing at the State Library on Saturday and Misery wants to drag me along. Can you come? I think Monica's going to be there, and I'd hate to act like I actually approve of her and Misery…" Red let out an irritated huff, sounding for all the world like an overprotective father. "Anyway, so, can you come?"

"Sure, who's the writer?" Ratt swerved quickly to avoid an incoming bus, wincing at the loud blast from the horn in retaliation.

Red's voice came back crackly. "I dunno, one of those weird Czech ones he keeps raving about, Ev-something-or-other. Do you reckon you could get away?"

"Yeah sure, Sunday's my day off."

"Are interns even _supposed_ to get day offs?"

"I don't…" Ratt started as he realized he had inadvertently driven past the School, and pulled into a tight U-turn to get back to it. "I've got to go. I'll see you in Carpe Diem after work?"

"Can't, sorry, my shift goes overtime on Saturdays. Maybe next week."

"Okay." The phone went dead in his hand. Ratt sighed as he wheeled his motorbike to the bike rack, turned off the ignition and shoved his keys and iPhone into his bag. The black satchel was heavier than it had ever been due to the large amount of folders and notes he had amassed the previous day; you could learn a surprising lot from observation, Ratt had noticed.

"Your clearance card came in today." Marianne's punctual honk greeted him over the whirr of the automatic sliding doors. His shoes thumped against the dark carpet as he crossed the lobby to receive his ID, the plastic card pressing almost reluctantly into his hand.

"Thanks. Where's Evgenia?"

Marianne's eyes glared balefully at him, and Ratt remembered Evgenia's comment about her bitterness at her receptionist job. "_Doctor Nadezdha _is up in Lab 04." She sniffed vainly, bony finger extending for a rapid double-click on the computer mouse. "_What _they've been doing up there is beyond me, but…"

"Okay, thanks." Ratt crossed the lobby for the lifts, ignoring the receptionist's palpable air of disapproval.

The lift door rattled and closed, and Ratt couldn't help feeling like he was walking into a trap.

4444

"I have gathered you here today," the Director announced. His black eyes swept the table with a glaring intensity, leaving Ratt feeling slightly breathless. "To discuss the School's objectives."

It was the signal everyone else had been waiting for. Several of the other men at the table straightened and a dark haired woman glanced upwards briefly before once again burying her nose in a small black notebook she held.

The conference room seemed a typical one; long, rectangular and darkly furnished, with a stretch of dark grey carpeting. A long table exquisitely crafted from ebony wood stretched the length of the room, surrounded by straight-backed chairs padded in rich ox-blood leather that glistened unpleasantly in the harsh fluorescent lighting above. The rest of the room was bare, except for a small barred skylight that provided sparse illumination to light up the interior of the room. Yet it held the same dark chill all the rooms in the School possessed, and Ratt couldn't help shivering despite his labcoat's thick fabric.

"As many of you know," the Director's words dropped from his lips like lead weights, his tone the jarring, twisted notes of a cracked funeral bell. "This School has currently been running for fifteen years. Fifteen long years of scientific experiments." His voice turned rueful, fingers splayed against the dark wood of the table.

Everybody in the room seemed to be collectively holding their breaths; Ratt certainly couldn't take in a gulp of the air, heavy and laden with menace. The chill worked its fingers up the walls, caressing the shadows, seeming to make the room bigger, higher, the darkness a monster yawning and stretching awake for the first time.

The first time in fifteen years…

"What many of you don't know is the School's real objective." Ratt's eyes bulleted back to the Director, and every muscle in his body stiffened. The Director seemed taller than he had ever seen him, yet somehow hunched and weary. "What many of you don't know is that the School is one of the many branches of a company." His sable gaze flicked up, scorching the eyes of everyone unfortunate enough to catch the dark fire contained in his irises.

"You might know it," the Director's voice was dark, "as Itexicon."

Ratt felt his throat seize up. All around him, the scientists were uttering similar exclamations of shock. Each and every one of the people in the room had at one point seen or even sampled an Itexicon product. Ratt had lost count of how many times he had seen their stark blue-and-grey logo; on a brand of soft-drink, on a billboard in a city, even on the fliers his mother gave out at the real estate office.

"Itexicon is a conglomerate, as I'm sure many of you know," the Director stood up. The action was unnecessary; Ratt felt certain he could not have cast a more intimidating shadow even if he wanted to. "They have branches in every industry: pharmaceuticals, advertising, sport, music…" His gaze flicked up and his voice sharpened. "_Genetic engineering_."

Ratt knew this; he knew all of this. The news that the School was part of Itexicon had come as a bit of a shock, but he had accepted that. So why was the Director telling them about it? And why had he seen fit to gather the entire School to hear him?

"The real motive behind the School is mainly to engineer new species of human and animal hybrids, to assist Itexicon with reaching their goal of designing a 'perfect world'." The Director's next statement sufficiently answered that question.

Ratt froze and the room erupted. All around him scientists were whispering, exclaiming, muttering amongst each other, their voices rising and mingling in a shocked chorus.

"Enough!" the Director's voice lashed at the crowd like a whip and, like a herd of frightened horses, they quietened. "Thus far, the Melbourne School has been unable to produce any hybrids due to the low quality of facilities here." The Director's mouth curved in a small, sardonic smile. "Also, the fact that this brand of genetic engineering is illegal makes it rather tricky."

Ratt felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck; the muttering increased like a black swarm. What they were doing was _illegal_?

"I needn't tell you that if this got out, if any one of our ranks decided to breathe a word about what we do to anybody on the outside, the consequences will dire for all of us." The Director's black, black eyes were heartless as they roved over the watching faces of his scientists. The pencil he had been toying with since the meeting began suddenly seemed razor-sharp and deadly; the cold grey sheen of the lead as threatening as any bare blade.

"_All of us_." The Director's words were insistent, cruel, and Ratt felt himself begin to shake. The room was becoming unbearably still now, the scientists sitting at the table icy statues carved from stone, staring at their leader with cold, dead eyes that reeked of that _feeling_, the intangible _darkness _that seemed to have plagued Ratt the moment he had set foot in the lobby.

Black walls and white coats bled into a kaleidoscope. The chill was creeping up his chest, stuffing itself into his ears and nostrils and eyes, worming its way down his veins and burying itself into his heart. Opposite him, the shadow of her hair had darkened Evgenia's brown eyes to black, and her face was still.

Ratt would watch. He would listen. And then he would decide.

"I have not been particularly honest with you, and for that, I apologize." The Director's words were savage now, hacking from his throat and throwing themselves at the room like chunks of ice. The room seemed halted, waiting. "The reason I have chosen to reveal all this is because of an incident that occurred several days ago. Around the time our new intern joined us," he added baldly, and Ratt felt every eye in the room swivel around to stare at him.

"Several days ago, I received a message." The eyes turned back. "The message was from a member of the American branch of the School, come to Australia to review the standard of our facilities here. The man's name was Jeb Batchelder."

If Ratt had been shocked before, he was now completely floored. The cold-eyed man that had appeared at his mother's cocktail party? The man who had taken an almost creepy interest in his studies? _That _Jeb Batchelder?

"He came with a message from the head of Itexicon's main headquarters." The Director's fingers curled into brutal, pale little fists, bloodless lips tightening into a thin line. "He told me that if this School failed to produce any viable experiments within the next five years, the School will be shut down."

Nobody spoke. Everybody in the room seemed to be leaning forward, waiting with bated breath for the 'but' they all knew was coming. The chill in the room had reached an almost unbearable intensity; Ratt was sure his chattering teeth were clearly audible to everyone in the vicinity.

"Unless we can successfully produce a viable experiment. I have chosen a transgenic. Or, to those who don't know, an animal human hybrid. All laboratories shall be reassigned to working on the transgenic project. Everybody must contribute, and _no one _is allowed to tell anybody about this."

Looking around at the rest of the scientists, Ratt caught several disapproving frowns and even more headshakes. He sat in unbelieving silence. All around him the scientists were talking, urgent voices flapping at his ears, harsh consonants grating down into a low whine. It felt as though he was hearing them all simultaneously in a rapidly furthering echo chamber, their voices getting lower and lower as he sat in stunned silence.

The darkness drove an icy cold shard deep into his heart. His pulse drowned in his ears. His muscles clenched, then released, jolting him upright in his chair.

And all around him, the whitecoats kept talking.

4444

After the meeting had broken, Evgenia found the Director squatting next to the pond out the front of the building. The man was watching the orange and white koi swirl through their watery haven with unfocused black eyes.

"They're very peaceful, aren't they?"

Evgenia stopped several paces away. The Director's voice had an odd edge to it, a rueful, jarring note held tight within the timbre of his words, almost as though he was regretting his decision. Those white hands were open, palms pressing against the smooth grey concrete, long fingers curling around the lip of the pond.

"Yes…" Evgenia said slowly, trying to work out what he was doing here. "Director? I'm sorry, but what are you doing out here?" She felt she was going slightly off-topic. Such blasé inquiries about the Director's state of health seemed laughable in the wake of what they had just heard. But she didn't want to think about it.

The Director's short, humourless smile was as sharp as flint. "Thinking. I find it peaceful out here."

Evgenia glanced around at the pond, the plane trees shedding their leaves in thick brown clumps onto the nature strip, the miniature bonsai framing the concrete steps leading up to the building, the bicycle rack clasping two battered bicycles and a glossy black motorbike. A lone car growled at them as it swept along the road, headlights cutting through the Saturday evening gloom like knives, the loud bass of the radio reverberating from the open window in loud thumps. But despite all that, Evgenia could see what the Director meant. If one ignored the road and focused only on the pond and the trees, and not the threats, the impending experiments and the crime, it really was quite peaceful.

Nevertheless… "Director, you have to come back inside. You are needed in Lab One." Evgenia tried to sound firm, despite the pity that caught at her mind when she turned back to the Director. Although in his late forties, at that moment, crouching by the pond, the Director could not have reminded her more of a little child; pondering, desperate and alone.

The Director closed his eyes. "They can manage without me for an hour, I'm sure."

Evgenia knew this type of answer would likely end in her dismissal, especially after what he had told them all in the meeting, but she couldn't resist. "Director, you've been out here for _three_ hours."

The Director opened one eye an inch; his dark iris seemed like the bottomless depths of a chasm in between two white eyelids. "Evgenia Nadezhda…" he murmured, one eyelid still closed, thinking. "That's Russian, isn't it?"

Evgenia nodded cautiously. "Yes, I used to live in Vladivostok. Why?" that was the thing about the Director; he was too unpredictable. An answer that might seem innocent one day could turn out to have deadly consequences another.

"Calm down," the Director sounded almost amused, as if he had heard Evgenia's every thought. His eyes drifted downwards again, focusing on the still waters of the pond, and the white koi that circled endlessly through the depths. "I was just thinking… we have good relations with the Russian School, don't we?"

Evgenia shifted slightly. "I don't know."

"Hunh…" The Director trailed his hands absently along the edge of the pond before suddenly, abruptly, straightening. "Where was I needed? Lab One?" a brisk tug at the lapels of his black coat and he was off, striding up the steps of the building, leaving a confused Evgenia staring after him.

4444

"I'm home." Ratt's voice drawled out and fell limp onto the wood floorboards, his Converse squashing it flat as he slouched through the doorway. All around him the white walls loomed like the restrictions of an asylum, his breathing echo-like inside a padded cell. Distant chattering drew him down the hallway to an open door at the end of the corridor, a pale, watercolour glow staining the air silver.

"Yes, Mr Patterson, of course. Yes, the viewing is set for the end of the week. Yes. Alright. Goodbye."

Ratt peered around the doorframe. His fear and confusion trembled in the air, unsettling and palpable. "Mum?"

_Please…_ the unsaid words floated down the corridor, trailing after him like a dark spectre or a shadow. _Please, for once in your life…_

Caroline Hart sat stranded in the middle of an island of manila folders and white paper. The light ran up her hunched back, retouching her blue shirt to the palest of greys before skating along her flaxen hair and rendering the pale ringlets gold.

"Mum?"

His mother continued talking, pressing the phone to her ear, not hearing her son. "Ms Lee, I can assure you the studio will be as you specify…"

"For God's sake!"Ratt snarled. Whirling around, he headed back up the corridor, yanking off his labcoat with no thoughts spared towards the rough treatment of the uniform. The white fabric was clenched into a ball in his fist, the all-encompassing bitterness engulfing his senses, filling his nose and mouth with the reek of darkness.

Hacking coughs burst from his lips and spiralled away into the split silence as he pounded up the corridor to the kitchen, and his room on the other side.

Behind him, he heard the phone being laid in its hook, a chair being scraped back. A voice. "Honey? Are you okay?"

_No, Mum_. The beat of his Converse replaced his heart. _I am not fucking okay. I've just gotten back from the School, I've learnt that what we're doing is illegal, _and_ I've got to somehow make a crazy mutant freak in five years with no Science training whatsoever. I don't know what the hell state my job is in, and I can't tell anyone about what we do at the School because of some psycho Director who'll kill anyone who talks... _A hysterical sob burst from his throat and he rammed his hands into his hair, fingers yanking on the brown strands as if to rip them out, because nothing, nothing made sense, and he had no idea what to do…

The School was a branch of Itexicon. Ratt's eyes dropped to his Converse and focused on the Itex logo printed on the aglet. His fingers stilled through his hair as realisation washed through him, leaving him cold and trembling. _They're everywhere. _

They probably knew where he lived, what he did. They would know if he talked, and if he did...

The corridor seemed impossibly long, and the carpet seemed soft and fluid as it collided with his knees, dragging him down to the floor. The walls seemed to rise up around him, watching expressionlessly. Soft footsteps beat down the carpeted floor of the corridor and suddenly his mother appeared by his side, surrounding him with the pastel-pale shades of her shirt as she hugged him.

"Oh, honey..."

"I don't know what to do." Ratt whispered. The fingers of his right hand trembled where they dug into the stiff fabric of his labcoat, black nails tiny points of darkness digging into the white expanse.

His mother's tone gentled. "It'll be okay. It'll be fine. Oh honey…" her arms tightened around the bony shoulders of her son, and Ratt felt the clinging wetness of her tears stick to his cheek. "I know you miss him."

His dad. Disbelief hit him like an armoured truck to the chest, replaced just as quickly by anger. Of course she would think that, when had she ever pulled her head out her reports enough to realise that the world had moved on, that her husband's death had been two years ago now...

He shrugged her off and climbed to his feet, fetching his bag from where it had fallen to floor. "I have to go, Mum." His voice was cold, distant, and Ratt wondered vaguely, in the back of his mind, whether the School's darkness had begun infecting him already.

His mother faltered, hesitated, and Ratt saw that confusion, that clueless puzzlement that had kept him awake night after night with helpless moaning – why isn't everything _just so_, why does my heart hurt so much, why, why, why – shatter the spectre of her face. "R-Ratt? Honey?"

Then, later, as he brushed past her to the door, "Where are you going?"

Ratt's voice was as cold as the conference room. "Away from you."

The door slammed, and Ratt fancied that the house shook in response.

4444

"Okay. Ready?" Red glanced up, his face charged with excitement. "On three. One, two… Three!"

"Rock paper scissors lizard Spock!" Red, William, Tanner, Lenore and Misery's voices rose in a chorus that was quickly replaced by a good-natured groan when they realized each one of them had once again chosen scissors.

"Again! I demand a rematch!" Tanner jiggled impatiently in her seat, grinning from ear to ear. "One of these days, you will all crumble beneath the might of my superior skills!"

"It won't be today, my wrist hurts." William defended himself, shaking his hand to emphasize the point.

Tanner glared at him, but William could see amusement glinting in the back of her eyes. "Coward!"

"Hey, guys, do you know where Ratt is?" Red interrupted, glancing around the crowded interior of Carpe Diem with worried eyes. "He said he'd meet us here."

"Well, I'm here now." A tired voice answered them.

At first, William couldn't recognize the voice. It was too cold, too dark. It was only when he turned around in his seat and saw his friend that he felt his breath catch in his throat.

Ratt looked _exhausted_. He was wearing ripped black jeans with a studded belt and a patched grey shirt artfully torn to ribbons at the waist. His eyes were rimmed with day-old black eyeliner and tired, purplish bruise-like shadows clustered darkly beneath each one, making them appear too large and too dark in a face that was too pale and white.

"Hey, Ratt." Lenore ventured cautiously when their friend didn't speak. Ratt sat slowly, shifting his bag onto the table. He seemed unusually twitchy and nervous. A muscle jumped repeatedly in his jaw as he flicked his gaze around the coffee shop, as though fearing any of the unremarkable-looking patrons would suddenly leap up and attack him. There was something in his eyes too; something dark and bleak, pressing against the normally cheerful light of his irises, leaving them still and guarded.

"Are you okay?" William asked, alarmed.

Ratt lowered his head, running a hand slowly through his ragged brown hair. His nails were painted with chipped black polish and looked jagged, as though he had spent all day chewing at them. "I'm fine." His voice sounded clipped, cold, and William suddenly had the feeling the Ratt that had woken up this morning wasn't the same as the one that faced them now.

Red craned his neck to catch a better glimpse of his friend's face. "You don't look too fine to me, buddy. Did something happen at work today?"

"I said I'm fine, alright!" Red jerked backwards as Ratt lunged across the table, teeth bared in a snarl.

William exchanged a worried glance with Tanner as Ratt sank wearily back down into his seat. "Was it… your mum?" Tanner ventured, voice dying to a small whisper as Ratt turned all the force of his green-gold glare onto her.

Ratt's new harsh, dangerous voice made the most crushingly sarcastic remark William had ever seen him utter all the more devastating. "Yeah Tanner, because it's always my bloody mum with you isn't it? Nothing's worse than having a depressed mother, is it?"

Tanner began to bristle. "Hey, don't take that tone with me; I was only trying to help…"

"Did it ever occur to you that I might not be able to _get _help?!" Ratt shouted, voice cracking. The volume was beginning to attract curious stares from other patrons. Upon seeing the source of the commotion stemmed from the table occupied by the oddly-dressed characters they'd all gone out of their way to avoid, they hurriedly turned back to their meals, leaving the argument to stew.

Misery made a small, timid noise. "G-guys…"

"Shut _up_, Misery!" Ratt screamed at him.

Red lunged to his feet in an instant. "Don't you _dare_ talk to my friend like that…!"

"Oh yeah, and I'm not a friend now, is that right?" Ratt hissed.

"Not if you keep carrying on like this!" William interjected forcefully before the conversation got any more out of hand. They had attracted more than just curious glances now; half the people in the vicinity were staring at them in fascinated horror. "Red, _sit down_. Ratt, I understand you're tired, but that's no excuse to go off at us…"

"Save your psychiatrist act for someone else, Will." Ratt shifted in his seat so his back was facing his friend, glaring out the window.

William was nearing the end of his patience. "For God's sake, Ratt, what the hell is the matter with you? You were fine this morning and now…"

That seemed to work. Ratt's hot, angry gaze dimmed and went out. His gaze slid from the window to hover along the table, voice suddenly becoming abashed. "I… you're right. I'm so sorry guys. I just…" his eyes went briefly to the centre of the tabletop, the plates and drinks upturned and disturbed by his lunge across the table. His shoulders slumped. "I just had a really bad day at work. I've got no idea what to do."

Tanner put an arm around him, their previous argument forgotten. "We can help you, Ratt. Just talk to us."

Ratt tipped his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. William could see his jaw shaking. "I _can't_."

William reached across the table. "Ratt…"

Ratt opened his eyes. William heard Red suddenly hiss in a breath.

Standing on the table in front of them was a small bottle of sleeping pills.

"Remember these?" William said, voice calmer than he could have imagined. He had lost count of how many long he had been carrying the bottle around, stolen from Ratt when they had first met.

Ratt nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the bottle. A small, strange smile touched his lips. "The Eluveitie concert…" he murmured.

"Right. When we first met." William held Ratt's gaze, voice becoming firm. "Dude, if anything troubles you again, _talk_ to us about it. We're here. We'll listen."

Ratt's eyes slid away. "Right." He ran a hand through his hair. His voice was subdued. "Thanks guys."

William pocketed the bottle. Slowly, they went back to their game. From the corner of his eye, William could see Lenore and Tanner's anxious glances at Ratt, and feel Red's concern as palpably as though he had spoken.

Ratt joined in occasionally, but for the most part, he stayed back on his seat, head tipped back. Occasionally his shoulders would shake.

Once or twice, William thought he could even hear laughter.

4444

To Be Continued...

* * *

Notes:

**Q&A Time**!: The song Ratt sang at the beginning of this chapter is loosely based off which song by which former-metal/operatic singer? Also, from what popular TV series is the stylized game of 'rock paper scissors' played in Carpe Diem taken from? Kudos to those who get both.

**Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**


	4. You Know What To Do

**Project: Angel **

**Part I **

**by Inspirationally Red**

**Chapter 4 **

**You Know What To Do **

"_My own mind began to grow, watchful with anxious thoughts." _

4444

Ratt woke up feeling as though somebody had slapped him around the face. For a moment he lay there, disoriented, listening to his heartbeat as it raced for the finish line and the creaking of the house around him. A strange acidic, bitter taste was coating the inside of his mouth and sticking to his tongue, bringing with it the sensation that something was wrong; that something in the house just wasn't right. His eyes darted as he sat up, unsure exactly of what he was expecting; a monster hiding beneath the bed, a ghost drifting with the hanging lanterns? But the room was still as serene as ever in its muted pale-blue and green, and the early-morning chill that infected the room was still familiar.

He swung his feet onto the floor. A brief glance in the direction of his alarm clock revealed luminous red numerals blinking 6:00 – another thirty minutes and the alarm would go off. Ratt's exhale was a cloudy gust made in an attempt to distract himself from his thoughts. The last thing he needed was to think of the scene he had caused last night, or the School… He groaned quietly as he remembered. He had promised Red he would accompany him and Misery to the book signing today.

Almost as if he had subconsciously willed it into existence, his iPhone rang on the table beside his bed. The music issuing from the tinny speakers was a low-pitched remix of Flogging Molly's Seven Deadly Sins, and he fumbled for it.

"Hey Ratt." Red's voice sounded suitably chagrined for the hour of the morning.

Ratt's reply was slowed by a yawn. "Hi."

"Are you coming to the book signing?" Ratt's pause must have been longer than he had thought, because Red instantly began babbling. "But it's okay if you don't want to, I understand, it'd probably be better if you take some time off…"

"No, no, Red, it's okay." Ratt hurried to assure him. "I'll come. What time is it on?"

"Umm…" Ratt heard the clatter of computer keys in the background, and presumed Red must be looking it up online. "From seven to nine in the morning."

Ratt's head whipped around at neck-crunching velocity to stare at his alarm clock. The blinking red lights seemed far more menacing that they had originally appeared several minutes ago. "_What?"_

Red sounded like he was trying not to laugh. "Better hurry, Ratt."

The phone clicked dead. Ratt flung the phone aside and clambered to his feet. The feeling of foreboding only increased as he shuffled around his room, feeling rather like the resident phantom as he rummaged through the overflowing laundry basket. Half of the clothes intended to go there had ended up in misshapen bundles on the floor, but he was eventually presented with a moderately clean pair of black skinny jeans and a bright The Rasmus band T-shirt. A studded black belt and a cuff in the shape of a coiled silver dragon were collected from the table on the way to the door.

As Ratt crept down the stairs towards the kitchen, he heard the sound of his mother's voice; a low, anxious trill issuing faintly from the small halo of half-light above the bench. Emerging into that light revealed the same water-colour scene he encountered every day, so why…

He stopped. The feeling hit him again; lathering and rising in a choking wave that had nothing to do with the breakfast he hadn't eaten. His eyes fled and clung to the silhouette of his mother at the other end of the room as his heart clenched.

"What's wrong?" he asked, for he knew something was without having to ask. He slowed; all thoughts of the book signing drained from his head in a slow trickle.

His mother avoided his gaze, staring primly at her neatly ironed shirt. "I have made an appointment for you to see a counsellor."

Ratt felt as though the wind had been knocked from him. _"_What?"

"It is for the best." His mother's voice sounded scripted and contrived as she got to her feet. Her head was still turned, presenting the back of her head to her son; her immaculate crown of gold-blonde curls.

Ratt had to sit down. "_How?" _The volume of his voice surprised him; it seemed like a gunshot around the crystal-quiet room. It succeeded in getting Caroline's attention; his mother's head whipped around to face him, wide eyes suddenly pale, frightened. He calmed down and forced himself to speak in a normal, conversational tone, despite the fact his insides were churning in shock. "Why?"

"I have decided that you need to talk to somebody regarding his death." His mother's voice was quick and forced, the slight shiver that normally ruffled her words at the mention of her husband almost undetectable. Her hand lowered to smooth her skirt. "And since you obviously won't talk to me, I have arranged to see a counsellor."

Ratt tried to understand. He really did. But his mother's words were bouncing off the insides of his skull like exercise balls thrown around a gym, and the impending book signing was making it difficult to concentrate. Even as he mulled it over, he felt rage begin to build and tremble in his gut. _He _needed a counsellor? _He? _A blind two-year old could see that it was _his mother_ who needed the help, not him. And yet she still had the audacity to say that it was _Ratt _who needed the help, _Ratt _who needed a counsellor…

And yet, he couldn't refuse her. He had never been good at confrontations when his mother was involved, especially not now, when Caroline was looking at him with such big, desperate eyes ringed in smudged mascara, as wordlessly confused as a newborn bird finding its way out of the egg for the first time. She couldn't understand why he would find this objectionable; in her small, narrow world of grief and heartbreak and townhouses and cocktail parties, it was her son that was the wrong factor in the equation, the only thing that didn't fit…

His voice, when it came out, surprised him by its firmness. Ratt thought he could almost detect an edge of darkness to the words too. "Give me the details."

His mother faltered at his tone – he could see it in her eyes – but the events of the previous day must have hardened her, because she went onwards. "The counsellor's name is Doctor George Crowe. I have arranged from you to see him today, from five to six thirty pm. His office is in Carlton, 199 Barkley Street..."

Her sigh was like the rustle of falling leaves as he walked out of the room.

4444

The State Library of Victoria was perhaps the most well-known library in Melbourne, and boasted a daily influx of students from various universities seeking to study specialized topics. Such resources could normally only be found in the Library, yet that did not explain the gaggle of girls who were hanging around the entrance seemingly for the sole purpose of gaping at them.

"They're staring at us again," Misery's voice had a distinct edge to it as he looked over his shoulder. One of the girls, a willowy young woman with ruler-straight brown hair and the type of eyes Ratt had previously thought only attainable by Photoshop, made a none-too-discreet job of pointing out Misery's attire to her friend, causing the melancholic young man to flush red.

"Just smile and wave," Red told him. Rumpling his hair so it looked interestingly windswept, he tipped a wink in the direction of the group, swiftly reducing it to a choir of giggling and sudden hair-flipping.

Ratt caught a blonde girl staring at his makeup and glared at her before turning back to Red. "Can we go in now?"

Red opened his mouth, clearly about to argue, then caught sight of Ratt's expression and closed it. "Yeah, sure, let's go." Red swept past the group of girls and into the Library, ignoring the sudden consternation his departure caused. Clearly the events of the previous day were still fresh on his friends' minds; Ratt thought he could see Misery shoot him a pitying look from the corner of his eye.

Ratt had always liked the State Library; with all its quiet, concentrated industriousness, the majesty of its various galleries and multi-tiered Reading Room, it had often appeared like a haven of knowledge to him. He didn't feel much like basking in its understated splendour today though; his mother's news was still in the foreground of his mind, making it difficult to focus on anything else. Ratt noted with amusement the effect the Library had on his two friends; Misery was looking around the room with an open mouth, clearly in awe.

Red noticed his friend's expression, and grinned. "Seriously, Misery, haven't you ever been in the State Library before?"

Misery flushed and shook his head quickly. "No."

"What?" Misery's news diverted Ratt's attention for the first time this morning. Nearly everybody in Melbourne had, if not visited, at least _heard _of the State Library. "How? Why?"

Misery fiddled with a slender black ankh piercing in his right ear, avoiding his gaze. "I just never really got around to visiting much."

Not for the first time, Ratt found himself wondering about the backstory of his friend with slight trepidation. It occurred to him that he knew next to nothing about the two men accompanying him; compared to Tanner and William, Red and Misery might as well have been complete strangers. Complete strangers with weird fashion tastes, a perchance for strong coffee and Russian novels, and allegedly former gang members, but that was about all Ratt knew.

"So, where's the signing?" Red asked Misery, interrupting Ratt's thoughts.

"Umm…" Misery looked around for a moment, then plucked a brochure off a nearby table with startling speed and rifled through it. "It says it should be upstairs, in the Reading Room…" for a moment, something young and scared-looked flashed across his face, but it was gone so quickly Ratt couldn't be sure he had seen it at all. "I don't know where that is…"

"Say no more." Grabbing his melancholic friend by the arm, Red steered him towards the stairs at the opposite end of the room, followed by a bemused Ratt. Their footsteps were muffled against the pristine floor as they walked up the stairs, Red questioning Misery excitedly of the nature of the signing while Ratt fell slightly behind. Ordinarily he would have been chipping in to the conversation in turn, but today he just didn't feel in the mood, instead troubling over the appointment his mother had made.

_How dare she_, Ratt's thoughts felt like they were whirling around a tumble-dryer. _How dare she book an appointment without telling me first, I don't need a psychiatrist! It's _her _that needs the help, not me! _Inwardly he was aware he was sounding rather like a petulant child, but at the moment he just didn't care.

Ratt probably wouldn't have been so adverse to his mother's wishes had he not been to dozens of psychologists before. Following his dad's death, Caroline had promptly whisked her son off to various psychiatrists after he came home one night sporting snake-bite piercings and a skull earring. What transpired afterwards had been months of confusion, and the type of troubled self-consciousness that only Melbourne's finest mind-dissectors could induce. Ratt had already been diagnosed with depression, and he had no desire to repeat the experience of having his every whim questioned.

"Hey, Ratt." Misery's voice was quiet, but still succeeded in effectively snapping Ratt out of his thoughts. "You're quiet."

Beside him, Red exploded into laughter. "And you aren't?"

"Is something wrong?" Misery asked after shooting a narrow-eyed glare at his red-haired friend.

Ratt stopped and took a breath. There was no point in dodging the question; Misery could be surprisingly observant when he chose, and Red would likely badger him about it for the rest of the day. "My mum wants me to see a psychiatrist."

Red stopped so suddenly Misery and Ratt walked straight past him and had to double back a few paces. "What the hell?"

Misery gave him an intense, scouring glance that gave Ratt the peculiar feeling he was being X-rayed. "You haven't… you're not feeling depressed anymore, are you?" He paused at the end of his sentence, and Ratt knew they were all thinking of the scene in Carpe Diem the previous evening.

Ratt raked a hand through his hair with a groan. "I'm just stressed out because of work."

"Really?" Red shot him a sidelong glance. "Why, what's so stressful about it?" Red hadn't had much experience with stress-inducing work; the seedy café where he worked as a barista almost seemed to encourage laziness, from what Ratt had heard.

Ratt shifted, thoughts flying back to the scene in the conference room, his insides giving a guilty squirm as he remembered the Director's words. _What we're doing at the School is illegal_… "They're just getting me to do a lot of stuff I don't know how to do." He answered, mind only half-on the topic.

Misery patted his shoulder; the unexpected contact made him stiffen inside his black shirt. "It'll be fine, Ratt."

"Yeah, you're a bloody genius," Red piped up, as always seemingly unaware of his boisterousness. "I mean, come on, you're twenty-two and you already have a PHD. That's like…" he flailed his arms as he searched for an appropriate simile, face brightening as he found one. His spread arms came in danger of accidentally cracking Misery around the head. "That's like Einstein, man. I wish I was like that."

Misery made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. "No you don't. If you really did, you'd do something about it." The light-haired man gave Ratt a searching, ice-blue glance. "But _you're_ not feeling depressed again, are you?"

The almost psychiatrist-like tone of Misery's voice was beginning to make Ratt feel slightly uncomfortable. "No, of course not. I'm just stressed."

Misery seemed satisfied. "That's good." At Red's snort of laughter, he blinked, looking startled. "No, I mean, it's not good that you're feeling stressed, but…"

"That's okay, Misery, I understand." Ratt glanced around, seeking an opening where he could change the subject. "Hey, is this the place?"

He didn't need an answer; Misery's open mouth as he beheld the splendour of the Reading Room was answer enough.

Ratt hung back as Misery charged into the room with more eagerness he had ever seen him possess. The edge of tension in his gut had morphed into a coil of all the worry and stress he had accumulated over the past few days – the School, his illegal job, Itexicon, the Director, his mother, depression, the psychiatrist, the pills, the sleeplessness. Far from comforting him, Red and Misery's decidedly blasé way of assuaging him had only driven home what he had already known about them; the fact he didn't know _anything_ about them seemed as sharp as a needle to his brain.

_What happens, _Ratt thought miserably, as he followed them in, _when you don't know who your friends are? _

And that strange, dark feeling rose up inside him again.

4444

"Now, Ratt, let's talk." Doctor George Crowe levelled a smile that was presumably supposed to be motherly and kind, eyes flicking across the page in front of him.

Ratt raked a hand through his hair and stifled a groan. All of his earlier reservations and protests had swanned back into his head with a vengeance in the half-hour it had taken to reach the psychiatrist's office. Ratt normally didn't go so far as to condemn every person he met, but the psychiatrist deserved it. Even though the session had only just started, he could tell; Doctor George Crowe was _pathetic_. He had the slow, careful tone one might use when dealing with a small, unintelligent child, and his watery blue eyes conveyed a type of cloying concern evidently supposed to work when dealing with petulant teenagers.

More to try and see if he could cause that unwavering gaze to falter than anything else, Ratt answered casually. "Sure, let's talk. Let's talk…" he cast around for a topic of conversation, eyes eventually settling upon the only item in the room he could see really dominated. "Let's talk about the table."

The psychiatrist's face brightened. "The table? It's an antique, an old favourite of mine." He leant forward. "They say it was a gift to Queen Victoria, and actually sat in Buckingham Palace, can you believe it?"

_I was right_, Ratt thought, while Doctor George Crowe attempted to scar him with his shining blue eyes. _This guy is pathetic. He_ dropped his gaze to the desk. The brown tabletop was pitted with scars; the fabric of his glove scratched against the wood as he ran a finger along a thin, shallow dent. This desk, if it really had stood in Buckingham Palace, probably hadn't stayed there for long. The sun was setting through the window in a pool of bloodied gold, rendering the small, cramped psychiatrist's office in a gilded chiaroscuro.

"I believe you were taking antidepressants?"

The keenness of Doctor George Crowe's gaze was beginning to make him feel slightly uncomfortable. "Yes, but only…" The memory of the Eluveitie concert silenced him.

Dr George Crowe glanced at him, a thin smile curving his mouth at the sight of his patient's expression. "But only'," he mimicked in an expectant, inquiring tone Ratt loathed, cheerful smile stretching his mouth impossibly wide. "But only what?"

Ratt slumped in his seat with a scowl. He felt rather like a petulant teenager, and the sharpness of Dr Crowe's gaze was nearing the border between uncomfortable and downright creepy. "Only when I needed to," he answered. The memory of the pill bottle seemed to stick to his fingertips, causing a strange, bitter taste to rise to his throat, and he dropped his gaze to the desk again.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" Dr George Crowe followed his gaze. His own finger danced lightly across the tabletop, catching slightly in the dents. "The number of people that seem to think my desk isn't valuable…"

The tone of his voice indicated there was something profound in that statement, but Ratt had utterly no idea what it could be. _If this were a movie, now would probably be the time for a heartfelt confession_, Ratt thought. But he wasn't in a movie last time he'd checked, so he stayed silent.

Sensing Ratt's lack of interest, Doctor George Crowe sighed and smoothed out the papers. "You see, the thing is, Ratt, your mother is very concerned." His blue eyes were unwavering.

Ratt bit out the thought that had been bothering him from the moment he'd awoken this morning. "I'm twenty-two."

"And you think your mother shouldn't care about you?" The psychiatrist's slim eyebrow rose.

Ratt clenched his teeth. "No, but…"

"You went through quite a serious bout of depression two years ago, it says here." Doctor George Crowe lowered his gaze to intently fix upon the papers. "Is there anything going on in your life right now that you think might trigger it again?"

"No, but…"

"It says here that you've recently taken a job at a local laboratory."

Ratt's heart became clenched in an icy fist; shock caused his eyes to widen. This was going from bad to worse; if Doctor Crowe found out about the School…

"_I needn't tell you that if this got out, if any one of our ranks decided to breathe a word about what we do to anybody on the outside, the consequences will dire for all of us."_

Doctor George Crowe looked keenly at him. "You have a PHD in Genetics?" His smile widened as he skimmed his gaze down the brunette punk. "You don't really seem like the scientist type. Did you decide to take the job because of your mother? Or was it something else?"

Ratt's shoulders began to shake; he strove vainly to still them, breath coming in quick, shaky bursts. This was bad, this was bad.

_The pencil the Director had been toying with since the meeting began suddenly seemed razor-sharp and deadly; the cold grey sheen of the lead as threatening as any bare blade..._

Given the opportunity, Ratt was left with no doubt that Doctor George Crowe's questions would eventually dig deep, perhaps deep enough to uncover what they were really doing at the School… Ratt sat back, trying hard to ignore the psychiatrist, and thought hard. What did he want? He had always felt out of his depth at the School, floundering like a newborn baby suddenly forced into the real world. And yet… he thought of the previous argument with his friends in Carpe Diem. The outburst itself hadn't scared him. No, it had been the complete and utter lack of _feeling _he had felt towards them, his friends, his friends of about two years…

It was how they were all so happy and cheerful while he sat there festering, rotting from the inside out, tainted with the knowledge of the School, not knowing why he did anything anymore. They could sit around and enjoy their day-to-day jobs because nothing was _wrong _in their lives, nothing was as stressful as the School, they didn't know what he knew.

The sun slashed a bleeding chunk from the sky, and the rise and fall of the psychiatrist's breath reverberated in the back of his skull, shaking in time to the light of Misery's pale eyes, Red's laughter and his mother's pale, pale face. Sitting there, still and silent, Ratt felt strange; he felt as though he was falling, spinning in wild dervishes, yet at the same time, still ultimately grounded to the one position, never changing despite the forces tugging him inside out.

He loved his friends, really, really and truly, but… he just didn't belong with them anymore.

He was disconnected. All the pins and needles attaching him to the pale, superficial cut-out of the world had been plucked out by the darkness, and all that was left was his heart drumming inside his ribcage.

His mind turned unbidden to the pale flash of Misery's eyes. Black tattoos swooped up his neck beneath skin festering with rot, and suddenly Ratt felt as though they had more in common than they might think. Green-gold met blue in the folds of his memory, beneath the tiers and the gilt gold and the books, and there was some current of… _similarity _there, the current clinging to the darkness, deep and obsolete…

"Yes." Doctor George Crowe murmured, and Ratt jumped. "Yes, it's interesting, isn't it?"

Ratt would have given anything to have taken the pills in this moment. He would have traded his life in a heartbeat, would have accepted the hollowness that arrested him sometimes, because the current of interlocking lives was pulling him in three different directions, and he didn't know what to do anymore.

His home life. His mother's life. All the studying into late hours, all the careful, blank composure of a life not worth living, tiptoeing around the cavernous morgue of a house where his mother's feelings clung to the walls like plasterboard and everything felt unreal. A lifetime of never saying what he truly felt, for fear of offense…

His friend's lives, the catalysts. The bright sparks that had pulled him from depression and deposited him into another world; a wonderland of cafés with clock-patterned walls, folk metal in the light of the stars, alternative fashions tastes, and a sense of wonder that was slowly dying, receding, crumbling into ashes before his eyes, as the darkness ran beneath his skin like narcotics.

The School. The _darkness_. The midnight had infected his body like a canker, reeking of death-shrouds and antiseptic, coiling around his mind in thick, undulating waves of hollowness. Confined within icy white walls, the only sound was the drumming of his heartbeat, the only image the one of the Director's grin, the predatory sneer, burning above the shadow of an implement he now couldn't remember if it had been a knife or a pencil…

Something in the School had gotten to him, he knew. From the minute he had set foot in the lobby, the darkness had seized him with both hands and pulled him headfirst into the shadowy underworld of needles and bubbling organs beneath harsh fluorescents.

_The chill was creeping up his chest, stuffing itself into his ears and nostrils and eyes and worming its way down his veins and burying itself into his heart…_

The power to create life. The power to compress death. Those were all that preoccupied him as the session ended and he drove away. His motorbike roared beneath his legs, the wind slapped him in the face, and his green-gold eyes were narrowed. Tears flecked the bike's silver handlebars as the sun bled all over him.

He just wanted somebody to _explain _things for once, to give him a reason _why, _why all these things had happened, and to _him_, of all people. He just wanted… he just wanted…

_What do you want? _The darkness whispered in the back of his head.

He wrenched into a U-turn; the tyres screamed at the road, piercing his ears.

Why, why, _why _was everything so hard to understand?

Why didn't he get a choice?

He wanted to know; he was so sick of not understanding. He was so sick of nodding along, obeying blindly because he didn't have any other choice. He didn't even understand himself – or whoever he was supposed to be.

All he knew… no, all he _wanted _was to get away from this place. He had to get away from Doctor George Crowe's cloying voice telling him he was insane, that he couldn't change anything, his accusations and questions burrowing like worms into his skin, because he didn't know a damn thing about what he was doing, didn't know what it was like to be in that place where everybody expected something of you, and all their expectations juxtaposed. Doctor George Crowe had never had to realize he had ruined everything, never had to come home to a fragile, paper-thin waste of a woman who smiled at him and told him it was alright when really, everything was just wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

The power to sustain life. The power to decide death.

His mother's eyes flashed before him, and a choice that she had never given him whispered to him: _"What do _you _want, Ratt?" _

The road flew away beneath his tyres.

4444

The sun's blood had congealed all over the windows by the time he got home; the evening rolling in like fog from the river, blurring everything into a muted tapestry of darkened colours. The motorbike's engine thrummed dully as Ratt brought it to a halt outside the gate of his house, the exhaust pipe hot against his black jeans.

Ratt steered his bike into the driveway, keeping away from the side of his mother's sleek grey convertible. The roar of the engine abruptly cut off; Ratt almost missed the constant, familiar snarl as he walked up to the front door, reaching in his pocket for his keys. His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud against the worn wood boards of the porch, but even that failed to distract Ratt from his thoughts.

Doctor George Crowe. He knew that, given enough time, the nosy psychiatrist would come around to questioning him about the School. Ratt wasn't sure how much more of the blue-eyed psychiatrist's constant interrogation he could stand. Fear coiled like a viper in his chest, smothering his heart and forcing the darkness up into his throat, so that his coughing came out sounding like harsh snarls. He couldn't let that happen, the Director would…

The power to sustain life. The power to decide death.

He was so engrossed in his thoughts it almost failed to register when his foot hit something hard; it was only flinging his arm out to steady himself that prevented him from toppling into the hydrangeas growing by the porch. Looking down, Ratt saw what looked like a parcel lying at his feet; a roughly rectangular object wrapped in a sheaf of browned butcher paper, and tightly tied with a length of knotted string.

'Ratt' was written on the top in a felt-tip pen.

Ratt stared down at it for several minutes, unsure of what to expect. As far as he knew, he hadn't done anything over the past few days that would merit a parcel - so caught up in his little saga of fluxing emotions and the School. Maybe his mum had gotten it for him; some sort of book on dealing with depression, possibly.

He picked it up and opened the door. It unlocked with the clunk of locks snapping back and a creak of hinges. "Hello?" His voice reverberated back unanswered as he headed down the hallway. His mother was working at the office. Again.

Ratt dragged the parcel over to the kitchen bench. Dumping his bag onto the counter next to him, he opened a drawer and rummaged through it for a pair of scissors. The 'snick' of twin blades of sharp steel slicing through string seemed too loud inside the silence.

The room held its breath.

Ratt unwrapped the parcel. The room released its breath in a rush, and it seemed to him as though the whole house was creaking and groaning at the sight of what lay in the parcel.

Nestling in amidst the folds of brown paper was a gun.

Ratt stared at it. And stared. And stared. His whole body seemed to have frozen. Next to the gun was a card, and Ratt's eyes fled to it.

You know what to do, it said.

Ratt knew that handwriting. He would know it anywhere, almost as well as be knew the pale white hands that had held the pen, marking the words down with as much efficiency as he had displayed when signing Ratt's forms.

You know what to do.

4444

To Be Continued… 

Notes:

Phew, that was hard to write. I don't even know why :P

**Answers to last Q&A: **The song Ratt sang at the beginning of the third chapter is loosely based off the song **Minor Heaven **by Tarja Turunen. The stylized game of 'rock paper scissors' played in Carpe Diem is taken from **'The Big Bang Theory'. **

**Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. **


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